I do this heart rate test procedure to track my fitness. I run from my home in Meguro to Komazawa Park, coming into the park at the bottom of the course, and run one lap -- all this at moderate warm up pace. Then on the second lap I accelerate up the hill and get my heart rate up to 149 bpm, that's 80% of my maximum heart rate. By the start of the third lap I should be close to 149 and then I do my best to hold it at 149 for the whole lap. It can drift up and down slightly with the hills, but I always manage to average 149 for the lap. As a measure of fitness, I look at what pace I ran the lap in. This chart shows my records for each time I ran the test since last summer. There are a few gaps there where I didn't do the test, during the summer idle and after Ohtawara. The most interesting thing is that just before Ohtawara, the test gave me a pace of a bit less than 4:15/km. I subsequently ran 3:04 at Ohtawara.Over the past four weeks I have finally been able to get some niggling injuries under control and ran some very good quality workouts, especially the long hard aerobic workouts in Yoyogi Park on Wednesdays, mostly with Adam. I clocked up 450 km in January; not huge mileage, but solid, and a high proportion of it of good quality. You can see the effect of this period of training on my aerobic system as my pace for the test lap has fallen from 4:20/km at the start of January to just over 4:00/km this week.
What will all this mean for Tokyo? Well, I do feel that I am missing a few long runs due to the injuries hampering me through December, and the interference of the Shibuya Ekiden and Shinjuku Half, so perhaps my endurance won't be as good as it should be. But on the other hand, running at 4:15/km (3-hour marathon pace) should not present any problems for at least 20 to 25 km. After that it is anybody's guess. But I do appear to be in better shape than I was at Ohtawara soI will be a little disappointed if I don't break three hours on February 18.
But regardless of anything, it is really going to be such a buzz just being part of the excitement on the day. Running a good time will be a bonus, but it does now at least seem possible.
2 comments:
You are definitely on fire Steve!
One thing I am interested in is how you motivate yourself to run a hard sub 3 marathon knowing that you very likely won't come close enough to attack your PB.
Why bother? I wouldn't want to take all the pain to just come close. I'd be only willing to run hard if I had a serious shot at my PB. Maybe you have a PB secretly in the back of your mind which would make a lot of sense. If not I'd be curious to know why you do it.
Best, Ingo
Good question Ingo, and one I have asked myself a lot too, especially when the PB was further out of reach than it is now. I guess it just comes down to wanting to do the best you can at the time and having an attitude of treating every race as a race. I know I have been guilty of not always doing that at other distances, but so far I haven't gone into a marathon with the thought that I will be holding back. And despite considering it, I'm not going to start now. Plus, I'd like to have a sub 3-hour in more than one race...I have it twice, but at the same race, Ohtawara.
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