[be]

Hello.

I am reading about the AeT test as described here https://uphillathlete.com/8-diy-steps-to-figure-out-your-aerobic-threshold-indoor/

Can you clarify this “Step Six: When breathing through the nose becomes noisy and uncomfortable note the heart rate and slow down, 2mph.”

I have chronic rhinitis so my nose is always a bit noisy (the whistling drives my girlfriend crazy 🙂 ). So I’m trying to rely on what “uncomfortable” means in this context. I just want to be sure.

* Roughly above 162-163 HR breathing through my nose is definitely uncomfortable, I feel I have to skip and start breathing through my mouth. So this is easy to reason about. My AeT is lower than this.

* At around 155-158 or so, I can breath through my nose, but my breathing is heavy. This is a kind of deep breathing. I can sustain this for 15 minutes (and longer) as the test suggests, and it’s not uncomfortable, but it’s “conscious”, if that makes sense. If I got distracted here I could see myself starting breathing through my mouth (note: this gets a bit complicated to reason about because I also have “exercised induced rhinitis”, so even at a HR at around 120-130 I prefer breathing through my mouth)

* At around 145-150 or so, I can breath through my nose in a way that’s a bit more shallow and unconscious.

Background: Started doing my own ad hoc TFtnA program last spring (roughly 12 months ago). 2017 I did maybe 250 hours mostly in zone 1 (here I do not count the workouts I did at the gym, so probably more than 250). Due to a misunderstanding I did all training in zone 1, based on a “percentage of max HR estimation”. My max HR is 189, my resting HR is around 47. MAF HR estimation is 148 (age 32). Top of zone 2 estimation as percentage of max HR is 151. Right now I’m at week 8 of the 32week program, and I recently did the indoor AeT test because I screwed up and misread the instruction on day 0 of the program, so I’ve been doing the program with the estimation that my max HR is 151. Based on the test today, I _think_ my AeT (top of zone 2) is in the general area of 155-158, or is it lower?

Thank you so much

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on April 26, 2018 at 3:31 pm #9554

@be: It sounds like your AeT is around 150. Perhaps it’s 155, but that’s not a big enough difference to matter. It’s better to underestimate your AeT than overestimate it.

I would suggest you use 150 as the top of Zone 2.