Firstly apologies for the lack of contact this week, I've really been online much at all due to a combination of having college work, training and most importantly Call of Duty on the PS3!

Rather than talk about myself on the blog as I have done in the past I got some pretty good feedback from my last blog about 'November sessions' so I thought i'd go down a similar route and talk about heart rates when running.

Firstly here's an example of a track session I did last summer. It was a maximal effort session, it's not quite a vo2 max session due to the volume and the pace being slower than my 3k race pace although I'd go as far as saying it's the hardest session I've ever done! I did it on my own but did have John on his bike next to me to pace me. My maximum heart rate is 189bpm which is a reading I got from a VO2 max session and out of the 3 I've done I've always peaked at 189.

You can see I started out quite cautiously, getting a feel for the session and I was quite relaxed in the first rep an average heart rate of 167bpm which is 88% of max. I soon got into my running and kept a solid rhythm throughout with my heart rate averaging 174bpm, 175bpm, 177bpm, 177bpm, 179bpm, 181bhpm then finally 183bpm (97% of maximum heart rate) on the last rep.

A key number for me is my maximum heart rate on each rep. I touched 187bpm in the 6th, 190bpm in the 7th and then 192bpm in the 8th! (bare in mind my max ever recorded prior is 189bpm. I think it's a good sign of fitness when you can peak, recover, peak, recover again and so on. This is by far the best way to train your body to race.

Another noticeable number is my average heart rate throughout the session. I do my tempo runs at around 170-175bpm and usually average around 170bpm for a block of 20/25minutes of running. You can also see as the session goes on my heart rate isn't coming down as much as it takes that little bit longer after each rep to get your breath back and the recoveries don't get any longer! Again doing this week in week out in different variations will only help you improve.

You may have noticed I haven't talked about rep times in this, there's a reason for this. If I started rambling on about how fast I did them (or how slow if Mr Gebreselassie is reading this!) then it become irrelevant to you and you can't apply it to your own training. 

The good thing about heart rates is yes, they're individual to everyone, but even if you're a 40minute 10k runner you can go away and run 8x1k and start off running at 88%av of your maximum heart rate and then work towards running at 97%av of your max for each rep. All you need to know is your maximum which you can find out the way I did it, a VO2 max test, however not everyone has access to this type of test so there's a few simple calculations you can use as displayed below. 

I really do appreciate the comments that get left and any questions I'll do my best to answer. I'm not an expert in this area and i'm no coach however I can give you an idea of how I perceive my own training. I'm not an athlete who just gets on with it and leaves everything up to my coaches. I like to analyse sessions and see how I can improve myself. 

One final thing- all the data above was collected on the Garmin 405 watch. The main feature I like about this against my old Polar is that it records your heart rate continuously, so you can see within a rep if you've "eased off the gas" rather than just an average for the lap split. It also can show you how long it takes for your heart rate to drop within a recovery and this is a great indicator as to how fit you are if you heart rate is dropping quickly.

Thanks for taking the time to read. Everything is going well with me, I've got a slight head cold but nothing major so I'm going into Liverpool nice and fresh and injury free and just looking forward to seeing everyone and giving it my all!!

I'll look at another area of heart rates within training in my next blog.