Tuesday at the Bowl

Nothing special for today. Ran two laps around the Rose Bowl again...6.20 miles. I ran against my 'virtual self' on my Garmin 205 (shows a little cartoon of two runners, one from a previous run and another of the current run) and I beat myself by 8 seconds. Total time was 55:09. Some other stats from the run:

- Burned 1045 calories (I think the calorie formula may be off a bit...should be closer to about 100 cals /mile or 600 cals for a 6 mile run)
- Average pace 8:53 miles
- Average speed 6.7 mph
- Ascent time : 22:02
- Descent time : 23:23
- Flat : 9:44
- Temp : 75 degrees at 6:00pm.

My 5k pace is about 7:47 miles....where I should be for my 10k pace (according to general running formulas) is +15secs to my 5k, or 8:02. So I'm off by about :51 seconds. This indicates that I need to build my aerobic base (not surprising since I've only been running for about 8 months...and prior to that my excercise consisted of slaying dragons on Everquest).

So how to build an aerobic base? Increase miles per week at 60-80% peak heart rate (HR) or 40-60% VO2 max (no I'm not going to buy a heart rate monitor!), or a rate of perceived exertion (RPE) rating of 11-16 (light to hard), 3-5 days per week.

My peak HR is (220-35 = 185). So I want to stay from 111 to 148. I'd probably classify my run today as an 11 to 13 on the Borg RPE scale (equivalent to 110 to 130HR). Here's the Borg scale and the approximate equivalent HR:

6 No exertion at all ( HR = 60)
7 Extremely light (7.5)8 (HR = 70 )
9 Very light (HR = 90)
10 (HR =100)
11 Light (HR =110)
12
13 Somewhat hard (HR = 130)
14
15 Hard (heavy) (HR = 150)
16
17 Very hard (HR = 170)
18
19 Extremely hard (HR = 190)
20 Maximal exertion (HR = 200)

9 corresponds to "very light" exercise. For a healthy person, it is like walking slowly at his or her own pace for some minutes
13 on the scale is "somewhat hard" exercise, but it still feels OK to continue.
17 "very hard" is very strenuous. A healthy person can still go on, but he or she really has to push him- or herself. It feels very heavy, and the person is very tired.
19 on the scale is an extremely strenuous exercise level. For most people this is the most strenuous exercise they have ever experienced.

While monitoring excerise with a HRM is more objective. If you are out of shape, overweight, have high blood pressure, etc., your HR is going to be through the roof on the monitors, and if you try to stay within a certain "zone", you may not be getting the most efficient work for your time. There's probably more reasons why I'm sticking to RPE vs HRM, but I'd have to dig through all my excercise physiology books from PT school...probably easier to google RPE vs HR.

Next run : Thursday @ the Rose Bowl, 6.2 miles.