[Steve]

I am working on the 24 Week Expeditionary Mountaineering Training Plan, Base Period Week 5. I had a couple questions about the STEEP Uphill hike with Z3 work. I am doing my uphill on a short hill on the property I have behind the house. For each trip up the hill I get about 300ft of vertical and 0.34 miles of distance. It takes me about 8 minutes to go up and 3 1/2 to come back down.
1. Should I try to maintain the same zone effort coming downhill as the uphill portion? So if i need 20 minutes in Z3 should I run down at the same heart rate? I am currently only “counting” the time for the workout when I am actively running / hiking uphill.

2. If my heart rate climbs over the target for the zone is it better to stop until it drops below or just slow down and let it gradually come back in?

3. Is the fact that I have to go up and down multiple times detrimental to the effectiveness of the workout? ie – should I find a longer, steeper hill to try and get a more continuous uphill segment, not easy given the current stay at home efforts here in New York state.

Cheers,
SteveO.

Topic

[vik.waghray]

vik.waghray on April 17, 2020 at 6:36 pm #40585

My 2 cents:
1. In my experience and from what I understand, only time spent moving uphill should count toward the time called for in these sessions.
2. I usually just slow down and reestablish the rhythm for that HR zone, rather than stop altogether. Not sure if that’s necessarily better or worse, but I think it helps to move at a consistent pace. But I guess if you can’t lower your HR without stopping, then you should stop and just resume once it’s back in Z3.
3. I’ve thought about this quite a bit and I think this workout yields the best effects when you can continuously move uphill for the length of the workout, without stopping. You want to keep taxing the muscles involved at a relatively high rate, hence the term muscular endurance. However, making do with what you have is certainly better than nothing at all so I wouldn’t worry about it too much. These specific types of LME workouts are tough to do with limited materials/access.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on April 24, 2020 at 7:35 am #40846

1. Should I try to maintain the same zone effort coming downhill as the uphill portion? So if i need 20 minutes in Z3 should I run down at the same heart rate?

No! Trying to stay in Zone 3 for descents will trash your legs. The eccentric loading is much too severe.

I am currently only “counting” the time for the workout when I am actively running / hiking uphill.

Only the uphill portion should count for the ME portion of the workout, but the descent should be included in the total workout time. So if a workout prescribes 30′ of ME, the workout may be 90′ long, including the warm up.

I agree with @vik-waghray on #2 and #3.