Kategoriarkiv: Intervals

Pulse based interval training

#39 – 50 runs in 100 days summer edition
#96 – 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

Today it was again to do pulse based interval training where am a couple of heart beats under my threshold pulse during the intervals. My threshold pulse is 163

The layup is the following:

2K warm up
4x2K intervals with 2 min rest between
1K cool down

A bit chillier today around 14oC (57F). Started with 2K warm up and then it was time for the first brutal interval. Rested (stood still) for 2 min where I drank some water and tightened my energy belt.

On the second interval I have notice that during the running on a bike path which is gradually increasing in altitude that I also increase the pace and got to 163 so then I had to run a bit ”slower” to get back to 160 where I try to be during the intervals. Rested (stood still) for 2 min, drank some water and got the pulse down.

I have been lucky so far, on the third interval I am crossing a car road and this time a car came so I had to do a short detour and the pulse went down to 156. Take some time to get back to 160, the same if I get to 163 and have to get back to 160. At the end of the interval I ran into a heavier upwind and the pace got to 156 for a short moment, felt a bit more tired here as well. Rested (stood still) for 2 min, drank some water,

Finally the last interval where I also at some point got up to 163.

I handled the increasing pace much better this time, last time I got to 165 which is above my threshold pulse, this time my highest pulse was 163. Now I feel in my breathing when I am on my way to 161-163.

Ended with 1K cool down.

Intervals is not my favorite running training, it is the most brutal thing I can do to myself but I know what it will give at the end so there is a purpose and I am improving during my other runs. Maybe this interval training has something to do with it.

Distance: 6.88 miles (11.07K), time: 1.06.40 h, average pace: 6.01 min/k, max pace: 3.53 min/k,
cadence: 188, VO2 Max: 28 ml/kg/min

Pulse based interval training

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#25 – 50 runs in 100 days summer edition
#83 – 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

Tonite it was time for intervals again.

I am very satisfied with my Suunto Ambit3 Peak but during the spring the pulse watch ran into issues not finding the pulse belt from time to time. It was not such a big deal in the beginning because I could live without not getting the pulse registered, even if it is interesting looking at once in a while.

But since I started to look at my VO2 Max and also have started with pulse based training the pulse has become more important.

Suunto Customer Service has been great. I have had several support requests about the pulse belt, I have gotten several solutions and then it has worked for a while but then the issue has come back and now it was time to get to the bottom of this. I have suspected that the pairing of the pulse watch and pulse belt falls out and we have discussed if the pulse belt is the problem.

So when I scheduled pickup with UPS this morning I found out they could fetch my pulse belt and pulse watch this afternoon.

This meant that I wouldn’t be able to see the pulse and had to use Movescount on my iPhone during this training.

So I had to go on feeling as far as the pulse was concerned. When I was running on a hill up and down with my running buddy Lars at Vallåsen I was having a pulse some pulse beats below my threshold pulse and remembered the feeling in my body.

Last time I did this interval training I was increasing the pace a lot on the last intervals and the plan was not to run too fast.

This pulse based interval training means that I run 4x2K intervals and the positive things about this type of intervals are the following:

+ Gentler
+ Less risk of getting injured

But it is also important not to be above the threshold pulse because then it becomes so hard that it might require several days of rest!

It was very warm today so I brought one bottle of Resorb and one bottle of water in my energy belt.

Started with 2K warm up. I pass a horseback riding place during this warm up and today a girl was out with a horse on the dirt track. I am not afraid of horses but I know what damage one kick can do so I had to run across to another path because I felt that I wouldn’t have enough space to pass the horse.

Then it was time for the brutal pain. First interval. Part of your brain want to quit but it gets a bit easier when it it 1K left. Decided to stand still during the rest for 2 min and catch my breath.

Another brutal pain for 2K. Here is a longer hill, last time I was flying up that hill but today it was tougher. Could be that I still has not rested enough after my 48K trail run last weekend, the heat or that I ran alone. The pace got a bit slower here. When I was standing to catch my breath a elderly lady asked me if I had trouble breating. Inside I was laughing a bit because of course it can look that way after a interval and she didn’t know that I just finished an interval. So I told her that you would be a bit breathless after an interval. A conversation started about summer allergy and I couldn’t just start running, felt I had to finish this conversation so the rest was a bit longer than 2 min.

During the third interval I felt that I got above my threshold pulse and had to slow down a bit. Rested for 2 min.

Then the final interval, same thing happened here, increase the pace so I got above my threshold pulse and had to slow down a bit.

Ended with 1K cool down.

Since I did not use my pulse watch, no cadence was registered and of course no pulse or VO2 Max.

I have a little separation anxiety and hope that Suunto technicians can find a solution to the pulse belt issue and that I will get my pulse watch back soon. But it worked quite good with using Movescount on my iPhone.

Distance: 11K, time: 1.07.42 h,
average pace: 6.09 min/k, max pace: 4.04 min/k

Pulse based interval training

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#18 – 50 runs in 100 days summer edition
#79 – 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

Tonite it was time to test pulse based interval training. To have a pulse a couple of heart beats lower than my threshold pulse.

But of course I ran into issues with my pulse belt.

I had the pleasure of doing this with Malin, another Coach K Runner.

We started with 2K warmup and then it was 4xK intervals with 2 minutes rest between each interval.

I had created a workout in Movescount and thought that it was correct. The warmup, interval and first rest worked but not the second 🙂 so then Malin had to keep track of the distance after that.

Since I couldn’t see the heart beat on the display I had to go on feeling. My threshold is 163 and when we ran up the hill at Vallåsen this weekend I had a pulse around 160. So the first 2 intervals felt that I was below my threshold pulse.

Some other runners were out and dog walkers and I am wondering what they thought when they saw us and I was screaming at myself to continue and shout to Malin how long is is left from time to time 🙂

Sometimes I wonder why I do intervals because I do not like them at all. That is the most brutal running I can do but I also know what it will give 🙂 And tonite I was running REALLY LONG intervals.

The last two felt VERY LONG and I also went above my threshold pulse, thought it never would end.

The pace was definately outside of my comfort zone

Distance: 6.42 miles (10.33K), time: 1.01.20 h, average pace: 5.56 min/k, max pace: 4.11 min/k,
VO2 Max: 29 ml/kg/min, cadence: 182

MTD: 135.47 miles (218.1K)
YTD: 625.44 miles (891.90K)

Hilly intervals

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#10 – 50 runs in 100 days summer edition
#71- 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

Tonite I had the pleasure of doing hilly intervals with some other Coach K Runners – Emil and Marina.

First we did FKT on St Hans (Fastest Known Time). Coach K Runners have a route that we run on and register our times. Horrible experience. I was very fast down and then a bit slower up but had blood taste in my mouth when I finished. My first time is 3.13 min. What we will do later is to run this again and hopefully improve our times. I was surprised by myself, thought that I would be slower since I had a longer trail run this weekend.

After we had recovered it was time to do the hilly intervals.

My pulse belt didn’t want to be with me tonite so we couldn’t do pulse based hilly intervals

Set 1: Long hill, middle hill, short hill and sledding hill

Set 2: Long hill with Mats’s ”mördar” variant, middle hill, short hill and sledding hill

It was tough tonite, it is so much better to do hilly intervals with people who are faster than you, then you presses yourself in another way so we felt we were done after 2 sets.

FKT: 3.13 min

Total distance: 4.85 miles (7.81K: 1.99K transport to St Hans, 3.74K hilly intervals, 2.08K transport home)
Hilly intervals: Distance: 2.32 miles (3.74K), time: 44.35 min, average pace: 11.55 min/k, max pace: 3.06 min/k
Cadence on my way home was 178 🙂

Hilly intervals

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#4 – 50 runs in 100 days summer edition
#65- 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

This afternoon I ran up to St Hans hills to do hilly intervals.

To be honest I do not like intervals because you give 100% and are exhausted when the interval is done but I also know that intervals will make me faster so it is definately necessary for my next challenges this Fall.

Not the best day to to this, the temperature was 27oC (81F) so I brought my energy belt with me with 2 bottles with water. Was not sure which running shoes I would use but decided at the end to run in my Altra Lone Peak 1.5 that is my new trail running shoe.

I decided I would do 4 hills x 3

Set 1: Long hill, middle hill, short hill and sledding hill

Set 2: Long hill with Mats’s ”mördar” variant, middle hill, short hill and sledding hill

Set 3: Long hill, middle hill, short hill and sledding hill

I would test another type of interval training, rest between each interval in each set would be based on pulse. When I got down to pulse 135 I would start the next interval.

So of course my pulse belt did not to be with me today.

So I started with warmup running around the top hill doing kick butt with feet, high knees and Indian jump and then I ran down to the first hill which is the worst one. It starts flat and get steeper and steeper and then the heat on top of that. Have I told you that I, running and heat, we are not friends?

At the top of each hill I drank some water and then ran down to the next starting point for the next interval. Decided to rest for 1 min and then ran up the middle hill. After that it was the short hill and rested for 30s and then the sledding hill and rested also for 30 s.

After each set I took a flat run around the circle hill back to the strating point of the long hill.

It was time for set 2, the long hill with the ”mördar” variant is brutal. Good with water is that you also can wet your hair and face when the heat hit you.

When I was on my way down to the short hill on set 3 the pulse belt had decided to be with me 🙂 so now it was time to test the rest down to 135 before I ran each interval.

You still need to be a bit breathless between each interval and 135 seems to work for me. You decide what pulse you want to get down to.

After the last interval on set 3 the pulse belt had enough 🙂

It was nice running fast again, I have avoided any type of intervals or physical traning during spring due to my glutues problem that I needed to take care of before I started to run fast again. I will see if my knee will complain tomorrow or not.

The results from the interval training

The altitude during interval training

Interval training

Distance: 4.64 miles (7.47K), time: 1.01.45.8 h, average pace: 8.15 min/k, max pace: 3.47 min/k,
VO2 Max: 32 ml/kg/min, cadence: 170

Running Technique

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#3 – 50 runs in 100 days spring edition
#37 – 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

This afternoon Coach K Runners had the privilege to have a running technique session with ”Krutgubben”.

The temperature was around 7oC (45F) and grey so I decided to wear winter pants, orange long sleeve, fleece and green windstopper, since it was ”Rock Your Socks Day” I decided to have one of my pink compression socks and one black sock for this occasion. And of course gloves and hat.

I was a bit late because I got stuck at something so I hoped that I would get there on time. When I got to St Hans Hills I saw a familiar face and knew that I was not too late anyway 🙂

Distance: 1.99K, time: 12.23 8 min ,
average pace: max pace: 5.33 min/k,
VO2 Max: 28ml/kg/min

Some Coach K Runners were already there, some familiar faces and some that I had not seen before. Åke asked me if I had a jump rope, he had some old rope that would work just fine but I told him that I did not have one but Krutgubben had a bunch. We would later found out what we would use them for 🙂 First we were running to the first place where we would do some running techniques, time would tell 😉 you never know with Krutgubben.

We started with warmup

The first exercise, after the warmup, was that we would get together two and two that had the same pace, the natural choice for me was Eva Berg and waved at her.

And then the first group (included me) would start with running with jump rope, if we did wrong the jump rope would get in the way, which was a challenge, I Think that I was doing OK, something between running and jumping 🙂 and the second group would do:

Freezejumps
Stepup side
180 degree jumps

and then we swithed, There were some hip exercises, that I will start doing at the gym, to strengthen my hip muscles.

and then we swithed, There were some hip exercises that I think that I would continue with to strengthen my hip muscles.

Today we did the following exercises:

Jumping jack special
”Kick Ass”
High knees
High knees with high frequency
Indian Jumps
Indian jumps with long arms
Indian jumps with short arms
Hedge Walking without hurdles

After the warmup it was time for intervals. To prepare the body for the intervals, we were warming up by two and two running forward. The first person turned off at certain point and ran back, and then caught up with the second person that just continued.

Today’s intervals was Krutgubbens favorite where you would really pour on and thus enable the twitch muscle fibers.
Today we were working 2 and 2. One of us rested. The first person ran 300m and ran back and the second person did the same thing, then the first person ran 200m and ran back and the seond person did the same thing and then the first person ended with 100m and the second person did the same thing . This set was done 5 times / team

During the intervals I was feeling that my right gluteus got upset and was not sure this was a smart thing for me to do.

Ended with 50 cracy jumps

Then it was time to head home. I walked with Eva to her home and then I started to run but felt that my right gluteus has had enough and started to walk.

Total distance: 4.64 miles (7.47K) running, 0.75 miles (1.2K) walking

#27 – 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

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I am not a treadmill lover but sometimes the treadmill is a life saver, like today when the weather is rainy, windy, cold and grey. I do not like to run in the rain.

So I have a pulse watch which warns me about storms and it made noise this morning and when I biked to the gym I had some heavy upwind part of the way so the watch was right 🙂

I was suppose to have hilly running this morning with a CKR friend but she ran into a cold last night so it was cancelled. Plan A was not to run on the treadmill then but since I have set a goal now to hit at least 10000 kcal before March 1 (participating in ”Kalorijakten”) I decided I would run on the treadmill also and when the hilly running was cancelled I decided I would do interval training on the treamill instead of only running 2-3K.

Last week I did Krutgubbens (The powder man’s intervals) intervals, since it was the first time and I did not know how I would respond to this type of interval training my fastest pace was 5 min/k but felt that I probabaly could run faster than that I modified my interval paces to the following:

I have noticed that at 5.10 I start to feel a bit more breathless and have to fight with myself, not that I am going to quit or anything but it is getting down to the area where I am not really at. At 5.00 it was even tougher and today I would go beyond 5 min/k and I was a bit scared even if it would be for only 2 minutes and 1 minute but 2 minutes is quite long but I did it. It was such a joy to do the last 2 intervals even if I had to pep myself that it is not long time left til you will have 1 min rest. That minute rest is a relief for a short moment 🙂

I am going to stay with these intervals for a while now. It feels good to have a security string that I use to be on the safe side.

So distance: 5.18 miles (8.34K), time: 50.03.30 min,
average pace: 6 min/k, max pace: 3.53 min/k, VO2 Max: 31 ml/kg/min

After that it was biceps, triceps, legs and ended with core: circles, side plank and then 5 min and 15 s regular plank 🙂

#25 – 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

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This morning it was time for hilly intervals with Coach K Runners. Before I woke up I heard the rain 🙂

After breakfast I saw that the rain had not stopped and was hoping that it would end before those hilly intervals. I do not like to run in the rain 🙂

I got ready to run up to St Hans hills. We were suppose to be 18 people and 7 dropped out because of the bad weather.

We started with warm up and ran to the long hill to get ready for the first interval. I always run fast in the beginning but slower at the end. It would be nice one day to be able to keep the speed.

And then we had an interval where we started at top of the top hill, ran down to the middle hill and when the first person touched the dirt road behind the middle hill, we were turning around and ran up to the top hill again. Of course Jimmy ”the gazelle” was the fastest down the hill. I do not understand where he gets his energy from. We did this interval a couple of times.

Then we did a new type of interval where we started from the top of the top hill, ran down the downhill hill, back up the downhill hill and up to the top hill again. This time I was coming down the downhill almost first but Jimmy ”the Gazelle” passed me at the end 🙂 then it goes slower up and the hills again where I was passed by the fastests hilly runners. We were told that if we want we are going to take the time and then later this spring time us again to see if there is any improvements. I need to remember to bring my stopwatch with me next time.

After that we did intervals on the ”circle hill” where we run down in the middle, turned right and ran up the steeper right side, down in the middle, turned to the left and ran up the steeper left part and did this til Mats felt it was enough, it was 4 or 5 times.

And then finally it was time for Mats’s brutal variant of the longest hill. I am running a hilly race called St Hans Extreme, last year they had to make some adjustments to the route because the municipality was performing drainage work on the slopes so at the amphitheater which had been my worst hill was changed and became much more brutal. So you run up that part, down to a flatter part and then up the top hill. I just made up my mind that I am going to it all which I did and was one of the first people up that hill.

Last it was the same interval when we ran down the top hill to the start of the middle hill and when the first person got to the dirt road we turned back and run to the top hill again.

It was wet, gooey and rainy today but a very good workout 🙂

Total distance: 6.04 miles (9.73K), time: 1.13 h

Average speed (to St Hans Hills): 6.40 min/k, max speed (to St Hans Hills): 6.10 min/k

Average speed (hilly intervals): 9.36 min/k, max speed (hilly intervals): 3.28 min/k, VO2 Max: 31 ml/kg/min

Average speed (to Eva): 8.59 min/k (stopped to compare the bottom of our trail shoes), max speed (to Eva): 5.57 min/k

Average speed (from Eva back home): 5.54 min/k 🙂 , max speed (from Eva back home): 5.53 min/k 🙂

Thanks Eva and Niklas for the good fika after those hilly intervals. I did not want to to get their home dirty so I took off my socks. It was very nice afterwards to put those wet socks on again to run back home. I do not know where I got my energy from, a fast run back to my home.

Results from the hilly intervals

Altitude at the hilly intervals

Gabby's Challenges

Challenges that I am participating in

Kategoriarkiv: Intervals

Pulse based interval training

Pulse based interval training

Pulse based interval training

Hilly intervals

Hilly intervals

Running Technique

#27 – 100 Days Of Miles Challenge

#25 – 100 Days Of Miles Challenge