[Rachel]

So I ran my first marathon, the Bull of the Woods trail marathon in Taos, NM a few weeks ago and it went well. I finished and didn’t take as long as I thought it might take, and I felt like I could keep going another 5-10 miles although the soles of my feet were getting sore!

My goals for next year are to get better at downhill running and to keep getting faster on the ups. I already have a few races in mind (Pikes Peak Ascent and Mt Taylor 50k). I felt great on the uphills during the race and came to prefer them over the downs.

Also, thank you Steve, Scott, and Kilian for the new book, I made a vert-based plan for the summer after I got TftUA, and have been following UA methodologies since last fall. Except for right now when I’m doing whatever I feel like for few weeks before the next training cycle.

My question is — somehow I spent 7+ hours in Z3+, and overall I took 8 hrs 41 minutes to finish the race. Is it possible to spend that long in Z3? I was fueling throughout, but I never felt like I was going at an unsustainable pace.

I’ve included a link to the race on TP in case anyone wants to take a look.

My AeT in theory is about 136 and AnT is 173. Major league ADS, right? Some of that is altitude-induced as we live at 7300 feet.

All year I’ve gotten faster (which is awesome and keeps me motivated) but my AeT has only increased by 3 bpm from Nov 2018 to Aug 2019. That’s with about 11 hrs a week on average of training, the vast majority of which was under AeT.

I can’t really get to a lab to get tested anytime soon but I am planning on retesting AeT and AnT in the next week or so.

I know at 2K feet my AeT is at least 8 bpm higher, and on our drive across the country this winter I’ll try to do a drift test when we are somewhere that is under 1000 feet. I’m wondering if AeT at altitude might be slower to improve, or harder to test for, or maybe I just need to put in another long training cycle.

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on October 2, 2019 at 11:47 am #29327

I think that all makes sense. A few things:

* Heart rate is not really a measure of training intensity; it’s a measure of stress. So the speed you’re moving, and the muscular load is only one factor. The length of the event–and the amount of muscle damage–is another. As is heat and dehydration. As are start line jitters. Heart rate really only measures training intensity when all other stressors are absent or minimal. So although your speed in an event that long is probably mostly Zones 1/2, the stress could easily be in Zone 3.

* And with an AeT/AnT spread that wide, it makes it even more likely that your heart rate would fall within that range.

* I don’t know if altitude is a factor in AeT versus AnT. Usually, the higher we go, the less anaerobic response we have.

* To be sure, I would get a lab test done. Once you have that, you can skip the drift tests, even if the lab tests are done much further apart.

* With all that training, I suspect that your AeT may be higher than you think. At what bpm can you comfortably breathe through your nose?

[Rachel]

Rachel on October 3, 2019 at 1:30 pm #29377

thanks Scott, the pace overall felt Z1/Z2 for sure. Probably a bit faster because I wasn’t using HR alarms but not drastically different.

I can’t really breathe through my nose well, I’m definitely not one of those people who would come up with a high number nose breathing. Especially right now with fall weeds.

I did an AnT test today but I ran out of mountain! I got 167 for today’s session (looking at the last 15 minutes, I went for 25 minutes total.). I also averaged 166 for an uphill mile race I did last month, so that 173 result may have been a fluke or just a really good day.

I’m going to try to confirm the result again. I’ll either try my muscle O2 sensor’s lactate test or find a longer hill. But 167 would not be as bad ADS-wise — sea level goal AeT would be 150, so my altitude AeT may well only be in low 140s.