I have just finished the Base phase training block, that is part of my overall training plan for Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga in May.  In a recent blog post, I wrote about periodized training, and the Base phase in particular.  Within that post, I stressed the importance of doing lots of consistent workouts, at low effort.

I analyzed my Base phase running today, and was very pleased to find out, that I had practiced what I had preached.  Since the beginning of the year, I have completed 23 run workouts, for a total time of just under 19 hours.  The chart above, shows that the vast majority of the time that I spent running, was indeed at a very easy effort.

For all those runs, my heart rate never went above Zone 3 and was in Zones 1 and 2 for 97.5% of the time.  There was more time in Zone 1 than I expected, but I think that is because I ran on the treadmill quite a lot.  When running indoors in winter, you aren’t working to keep your body warm on your run, so your heart rate will be a little lower than if you ran outdoors.

If you are going to use heart rate zones as part of your training, then it is important that those zones are set correctly.  I use the method promoted by renowned triathlon coach, Joe Friel.  His recommendations on how to set your heart rate zones can be found here. 

The next phase of my training is the Build phase.  During this phase, I will start to do some running at much higher intensity, which will change the amount of time that I will spend in each heart rate zone.  I’ll write about running in the Build phase in a future blog.