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Lead Stories: Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Heart Rate Training

Posted January 21st, 2007 at 2:00 PM by Emily Hoskins

Section: Running & Training, Training Tips, Health & Fitness, Exercise

Monitoring your heart rate during exercise is an excellent way to improve performance, avoid overtraining, and track your progress. Heart rate training is popular because it is easy to monitor and for most athletes if offers a practical way to measure exercise intensity. Heart rate training relies on the fact that as your exercise intensity increases so does your body’s demand for oxygen.

It is important to monitor your exercise intensity because (1) there are different physiological adaptations associated with training that depends on the intensity being implicated, and (2) you can manipulate your entire training program to reach your own personal goals based upon your specific sport or event.
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Train your muscles to use lactic acid as fuel

Posted January 6th, 2007 at 11:00 AM by Hariz Siddiqui

Section: Running & Training, Training Tips, Health & Fitness, Exercise

You exercise so intensely that your muscles burn and you gasp for breath. Then you slow down for a minute or two, catch your breath, and then go very fast again. This training technique has been used in all endurance sports since the 1920’s. Now George Brooks of the University of California at Berkeley has shown why interval training makes you a better athlete.

Inside each muscle cell are mitochondria, the little furnaces that burn fuel for energy. A major fuel for your muscles during exercise is the sugar, glucose. In a series of chemical reactions, glucose is broken down step by step, with each step releasing energy. When enough oxygen is available, the glucose releases all of its energy until only carbon dioxide and water remain; these are blown off through your lungs.
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Expand your comfort zones; improve “running strength”

Posted December 22nd, 2006 at 6:15 AM by Jim Fortner

Section: Running & Training, Training Tips

Jim Fortner is a weekly, guest contributor to TFS. Also check out his own personal running and advice site: “Jim2’s Running Page”.

Running strength isn’t quite as definitive as VO2Max or lactate threshold. It’s a bit ambiguous. However, as I view it, it has two components: physiological and psychological.

The physiological component is related to running economy, but it is also different. I think of both running strength and running economy as sub-elements of a broader subject that I call running efficiency.

Running economy is a measure of how efficiently you use oxygen while running at a specific pace. Improving running economy means that you can physiologically sustain a faster pace at a given percentage of VO2max, or a given pace at a lower percentage of VO2max, for a longer distance.
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Progression Runs: Flexible marathon training alternatives

Posted December 21st, 2006 at 2:40 PM by Jenna Sumara

Section: Running & Training, Training Tips

It’s true, most runners love structure. There are countless training programs, workouts, etc that offer and promote such beloved precision and planning.

They detail exactly what pace to run at, for how long and on what terrain; often ensuring dependence on training assistants, sports watches and heart-rate monitors.

Although such training can be effective, it can also be very beneficial to take a break from such rigidity. These workouts offer freedom, alleviate a lot of the stress inherent to traditional training runs and will enable you to become more in tune with your body.
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