Author: Rachel T

This week in fitness technology

I got my Wahoo TICKR X!  I took a long time deciding on which heart rate monitor to buy and there were some travails. I am very excited to train with heart rate.  I’m really bad at determining by Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE). Like many runners, I run my easy days too hard and my hard days too easy, I think.  I’ve been running off a pace chart based on how fit I was in January. This is totally inaccurate by now.

Today I ran a test workout meant to determine my heart rate zones. It was a Lactate Threshold Test, not a Max Heart Rate Test. It wasn’t hard and it wasn’t meant to be. A kinder, gentler Lactate test. The testing was based on RPE, which I’m very bad at attaching to a pace. The test gave me a Lactate Threshold of 147. Ok, sounds good.

Except on my run this weekend, my heart rate averaged 164 for three miles. I was going what I would call 10K race pace, which is supposed to be at about the Lactate Threshold. Notice I’m not talking about abstract speed here. Speed to heart rate mapping sucks when you are a multi-terrain athlete. The heart rate from running 12 min/ mile on smooth pavement is going to be massive different from the heart rate of 12 min/mile on trails or pushing a jogging stroller. If my Lactate Threshold was 147, my heart rate of 164 would be sprinting, super, ultra, absolutely as fast as I could run for 100 yards. Utterly unsustainable for 3 miles.

One of the aspects of my athletic self that I am trying to develop is the acceptance that going fast is going to be uncomfortable. That it’s gonna hurt sometimes. Like most beings, I’m not a fan of pain and I avoid it. Achieving more of my athletic potential is going to involve being willing to get into the pain cave. My RPE estimations are terrible because I’m supposed to guess if I could hold a particular pace for an hour and I have no idea!  I know the pace I want to hold, I know the paces I have held. I know how far apart those are.

I performed the test on a treadmill and I’m sure that affected the outcome. I was setting the speed at paces I have been using, rather than going by feel alone. Given that this got me going a touch under 12 min/mile it was still quite an easy day.  I’m thinking I will take part of that time and perform a second kind of test. This test is a lot harder. Conveniently, I’m schedule for a 30 min tempo run tomorrow (that is a fairly hard run), so this shouldn’t throw me off my training plan. I’ll report back after tomorrow with updated heart rate numbers and the result of my testing!

Decisions are hard

In service of my goal of getting as fast as I can, I want to leverage some technology. I trained with a heart rate monitor a couple of years ago and really liked how it helped me target exactly how fast or slow I should be running. I fall into the very common trap of running my fast days too slow and my slow days too fast when I don’t have a reference point to keep me on target.  I am terrible at running by “feel.” I would love to get there! But for now I know that my best results come when I have an external prompt to track against.

I have shopped around and I am going to purchase a Wahoo HRM. Their monitors work on ANT+ and on BTLE (Bluetooth Low Energy). The short story there is that they will work with what I have now – my phone – and with whatever I buy later, be it a Garmin, a Polar or what have you (within limits but it is highly diverse in supported units and this market space is only getting larger). It’s taken me months to decide on this. I’ve been stalking this damn thing. They have three models! The TICKR, TICKR Run, and TICKR X. I thought I would get the X. It’s the big daddy, it does amazing stuff (stores your data in the monitor to load into your phone later – hello swim workout tracking!) and I like to make purchases for the long haul.

But it’s not available yet. There are pictures, there are reviews! But you can’t buy it yet and I’m ready to buy. I’ve got the money, I’ve got the will. I want the thing! I’ve picked out the speed and cadence sensor for my bike that I can use with a laptop to get virtual power readings to improve my bike workouts. I’m ready to do this. and now I’ve got this stumbling block and I’ve no idea what to do. Do I wait for it to come out with no definite timeline? Do I buy the TICKR (the run doesn’t do much for me) and then upgrade in a few years time?

I thought I was going to do this today and now I’m stuck. Poop.

 

-fh