Building A Better Bumblebee

Gratz, Mark!  A more drama filled response later.  Woohoo!

I'm sure he did fine...at his age I was either babysitting my little brothers or driving a slow moving tractor with a wide swather down the road to get to the next field.  AND the only way we had to communicate with my folks was...well we didn't because if we could get to a phone they were in the fields.  My how life has changed.

Nice job on the race.  Sounds like a great day.  Good choice not to make your finish time the top priority.  Puts you in a great position to continue training for the big event later this year...and from the sounds of things you enjoyed yourself rather than finishing discouraged.  Hope I can have a similar attitude when I'm able to get back out there.

ounce wrote:Gratz, Mark!  A more drama filled response later.  Woohoo!

Thanks, Ounce! I might embellish (er, add details) on the even a bit later, but there isn't that much material. I'll add at this point I had the peculiar experience of catching up with and then passing people as the race progressed, which was odd. I felt a little guilty leaving them behind. I'm happy to report that they all finished long before the cutoff, however.

nkrichards wrote:I'm sure he did fine...at his age I was either babysitting my little brothers or driving a slow moving tractor with a wide swather down the road to get to the next field.  AND the only way we had to communicate with my folks was...well we didn't because if we could get to a phone they were in the fields.  My how life has changed.

Nice job on the race.  Sounds like a great day.  Good choice not to make your finish time the top priority.  Puts you in a great position to continue training for the big event later this year...and from the sounds of things you enjoyed yourself rather than finishing discouraged.  Hope I can have a similar attitude when I'm able to get back out there.

Hi Nancy! Yes, he was fine. He played World of Warcraft for most of the day and ate half an extra large cheese pizza. We went out for burgers and milkshakes after we got home, if only to vary his diet somewhat -- and maybe (maybe) deal with a craving from his dad.

It was a little odd being completely out of touch. They suggested that everyone put their phones in airplane mode, since there was no cell reception and it'd only drain the batteries. It hasn't been that long since that was the norm. Crazy. I almost activated my iPhone where I knew I'd get reception -- at the top of Hamilton Mountain, overlooking the Columbia River -- just to update my presence to anybody out there who might be curious. But I changed my mind, stashed the phone and kept moving.

Sure, I would have been happy to have finished faster than I did -- I'd guessed based on training runs that I might be able to do better than I did four years ago, when blown-out-feet left me limping the last few miles -- but I was keeping an eye on my HR monitor and feeling my heart pounding in my ears on some of those climbs -- and I know I couldn't have done it any faster this time. (It also helps that I remembered I'd done the previous race with a full marathon buildup and race in the months prior.)

What helped was the fact that nothing went wrong in this race. It was a full, honest effort. So, as I did some calculating in my head and determined that I probably wasn't going to beat my previous time, something inside me said, "Oh, okay. This really IS where I'm at." I mean, how can you argue with something when it's staring you in the face? Even my stupid ego had to accept it. And even it didn't mind. That's a nice feeling.

---

Update today. I'm a little sore in the expected places, but not horribly so, and my fueling system hasn't quite settled down yet. So that's all pretty normal. I need to remember that I only did 15.5 miles, so I don't actually need to inhale every calorie I can find.

The only thing I wonder about is recovery. My heart rate was above the lactate threshold predicted by the VO2max test, and I spent a good chunk of time in Zones 4 and 5 -- which I shouldn't have been able to sustain for four and a half hours, but did. I even came 2 bpm away from my "max" but was able to keep going for hours afterward.

I wonder if the test was wrong, or if I'm able to hang in the high effort zone longer than they think. But I mostly wonder how long I should allow my cardio system to recover from that high level of effort. I'll guess I'll rest a day or two and keep the runs very easy until things feel settled again.

The only thing I wonder about is recovery. My heart rate was above the lactate threshold predicted by the VO2max test, and I spent a good chunk of time in Zones 4 and 5 -- which I shouldn't have been able to sustain for four and a half hours, but did. I even came 2 bpm away from my "max" but was able to keep going for hours afterward.

 or if I'm able to hang in the high effort zone longer than they think.

Congratulations on a great effort. So yes, you, and others, have been running at artificially low heart-rates for years. But so what it has kept you running injury free-- and that is the important thing.

Lobo wrote:

The only thing I wonder about is recovery. My heart rate was above the lactate threshold predicted by the VO2max test, and I spent a good chunk of time in Zones 4 and 5 -- which I shouldn't have been able to sustain for four and a half hours, but did. I even came 2 bpm away from my "max" but was able to keep going for hours afterward.

 or if I'm able to hang in the high effort zone longer than they think.

Congratulations on a great effort. So yes, you, and others, have been running at artificially low heart-rates for years. But so what it has kept you running injury free-- and that is the important thing.

I think the "artificiality" of lower heart rate training is subjective and depends on the goal of the person training. It's helpful for endurance events but pretty much useless for short-distance events. Fewer injuries is good, too.

Putting that discussion aside, though, my comments above were directed more toward the heart rate zones established "objectively" through that VO2max test back in April. That test (with a breathing mask, sensors) put out data that set my lactate threshold at 143 bpm and the top of my Zone 4 "all out pace to sustain up to an hour of activity" at 150.

My average heart rate for the entire 4.5 hours was 150.

By the test's logic, I should have blown up a quarter of the way in.

That doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?  I'm going to collect the data and send it to the physiologist who did the test. Maybe he can offer an explanation. I'd thought the numbers looked weird after the test -- I'd always perceived my LT as being in the 160s when I was racing marathons -- so maybe something went wrong that day. That, or I'm just an overachiever.

Mark -- my HR max was 189 tested by running up a 9% grade hill a number of times to exhaustion in 2009. My LT was in the mid 160s per the Daniels tables. "They" say you lose about a beat per year. I suspect the HR test you had was somehow flawed? -- Although a trail race with some serious elevation changes it makes sense to me that you can run @150 for an extended time as that might be an upper aerobic zone.  (ie decent work but not immediately destructive). The HR test must have been off. Anyway excellent effort.

Lobo wrote:Mark -- my HR max was 189 tested by running up a 9% grade hill a number of times to exhaustion in 2009. My LT was in the mid 160s per the Daniels tables. "They" say you lose about a beat per year. I suspect the HR test you had was somehow flawed? -- Although a trail race with some serious elevation changes it makes sense to me that you can run @150 for an extended time as that might be an upper aerobic zone.  (ie decent work but not immediately destructive). The HR test must have been off. Anyway excellent effort.

I think there may be something off with the test, as well. A friend who took the same test mentioned that she can never hit her true HR max on a test like that, because you don't have the edge of competition to keep focused and pressing hard. If you don't have that motivation, it's hard to keep going when part of your brain goes, "Oh, screw it. This is good enough."

You're only re-writing your book on what's what.  My HR max became 201 in 2009, instead of 220-age+/-5 for fitness level.

Your actual data trumps anything, even your own prior data.  New sheet of paper, now.

As much as you're not reporting a time, at least you didn't report that you were DFL.  Did you at least pull your shoes off for the last 100 yards and run across barefoot for the cameras?

ounce wrote:You're only re-writing your book on what's what.  My HR max became 201 in 2009, instead of 220-age+/-5 for fitness level.

Your actual data trumps anything, even your own prior data.  New sheet of paper, now.

As much as you're not reporting a time, at least you didn't report that you were DFL.  Did you at least pull your shoes off for the last 100 yards and run across barefoot for the cameras?

Well, maybe so. But what doesn't make a lot of sense is how, if my lactate threshold is supposedly 143, that I was able to spend nearly the entire 4:35 or so of the race with an average HR of 150. My legs should have been filling with waste products and getting increasingly sluggish by Common Accepted Theory. But that didn't happen. Why?

One small theory is this: The treadmill test calculated all these levels only via respiration, measuring the amount of CO2 I was exhaling and correlating it with heart rate. The paperwork I got talked more about shifts from fat- to glycogen-burning states and said it was ideal for the respiratory transition to occur about the same time as blood lactate begins to accumulate. So, it's possible that my body might clear lactate to a (much?) higher heart rate than the respiratory test suggests? I don't know, but maybe.

See how I sneaked the time in? My official time was 4:35:08 (144/160).

One time I am happy to brag on is my time on a 0.9-mile Strava segment going up 769 feet at a 15% average grade, hitting the summit of Hamilton Mountain at 2,403 feet. When I did that section back in March, I did it at a 42:46 with an average HR of 151; on June 1, the pace was 32:32 and the HR was 146. On race day, the pace was 26:59 at a HR of 161. Part of that was because I didn't stop to take photos/catch my breath, but still. That's quite a difference.

Good work on getting back into the racing game.  So, what's next???

Nick Morris wrote:Good work on getting back into the racing game.  So, what's next???

Thanks, Nick! It's kind of weird wrapping my brain around the fact that this is my first race without some sort of a disaster since 2009. Good grief! Is that right? Well, I did a marathon as a training run in 2010, but that was only because I'd blown up bigtime during training. So I don't think that counts, either. So yes, I waited nearly six years for a well-run race. Wow.

With that in mind, I'm getting ready to transition into training for the Oregon Coast 50K in October. (First six miles on the beach! Only three hills!)



Well, okay, they're big hills... but still.

I'm counting the work I did getting ready for last weekend's race as part of the training for the OC50. I'll be shifting schedules and such with wife and child out of school, but a nagging fear that I might be biting off more than I can chew with this race ought to keep me motivated to make the schedule work. It appears my goal for this race (aside from enjoying it) will be hitting the cutoffs.

A note on the "nagging fear." Ultrasignup.com has a feature where it gives you a "rank" based on past results*. It puts my rank at about 45. What makes me nervous is looking at 50K results from last year's OC50 and seeing that no finisher had a rank that low. Maybe that's more motivation to train well, but it's kind of unsettling.

*-This is how Ultrasignup defines its "runner rank" system: Runner rank is simply an average of your past results in our database. Rank is calculated using past results in our database. For each race, we take the gender specific best time(winner) and divide that time by each participant's time. The result is a value less than 100% with winners receiving the full 100%. The average of the participant's past races is their ranking.

So, here's the question that I've posed to the physiology guy at the local community college:

I just wrapped up my June goal race (the Beacon Rock 25K), and I was intrigued by my heart rate data in light of the results from my VO2Max test back on April 3. They seem to be far higher than what the test suggested was possible, and I’m wondering if you can help me understand what was going on.

First, as a reminder, here’s what my test showed:

Zone 1: 114 (114-122) VT1
Zone 2: 129 (129-136)
Zone 3: 143 (136-143) VT2/LT
Zone 4: 150 (143-150)
Zone 5: 172 (152-172) MaxHR: 172

Based on this and the information you gave me, I would have concluded that I’d start to accumulate lactate after passing HR 143, and that my passing HR 150 would mean I had maybe an hour at that intensity before blowing up.

Except that I averaged a HR of 150 for the entire race. That’s 4:35:05.

Here’s a zone-by-zone breakdown:

Time in heart rates zones. (I set the zones to match the ones we set in the test.)

Zone 1: 01:00 (371.2 ft)
Zone 2: 05:28 (0.4 mi)
Zone 3: 36:20 (2.4 mi)
Zone 4: 2:16:14 (9.1 mi)
Zone 5: 1:47:10 (5.0 mi)

HR Average: 150
HR Max for race: 170

So that was more than 4 hours over my LT, with about a quarter of that time in my “Peak Effort” zone. How is that possible?

Also, I should note that I climbed about 3,700 feet in this race. So those high HRs were coming while power hiking. But I don’t know whether that would have any impact on the results.



-30-

I don't know how much it matters to know all this, but if the guidelines he gave me are inaccurate (or if I'm just awesome at being able to sustain an "unsustainable" effort), I'd sure like to know.

You're just a freaky kind of guy.  Clearly someone or something was imputted and/or reported wrong.  Or maybe the low HR running skewed the results.

ounce wrote:You're just a freaky kind of guy.  Clearly someone or something was imputted and/or reported wrong.  Or maybe the low HR running skewed the results.

OR, as a friend of mine who has taken the same sort of test points out, maybe the uptempo work I did since the original test actually bent the curve and raised my lactate threshold and adjusted all my HR targets.

If that's the case, my mind is slightly boggled. I had assumed the test would establish a series of consistent benchmarks based on the amount of strain put on the body (measured by HR) and that the variable that changes is how much power/speed you can generate at any point along that line. My friend said yes, that's the case if you add no intensity to the mix. If you do add intensity, you change a different variable. You bend the curve.

(Pause while I read an email.)

Ah, yes. Okay. I just heard back from the physiologist, and this is what he said: "My guess would be your heartrate went up and down allowing for you to recover and buffer off that lactic acid build up a little at a time prolonging the “blow up”.  Another possible reason could be that you trained up your threshold which would be awesome."

My heart rate fell after the big peaks, but never dipped below what the test said was my LT. So... I guess No. 2 applies?

He also said: "The variable that is more or less fixed is your max HR which gradually declines over time.  Thresholds will change through training and eight weeks is a reasonable time frame to have noticeable improvements."

A retest might answer questions more precisely, but they're kind of expensive.. and since their results don't necessarily have the staying power I'd hoped for, that's not going to happen. He did offer a link to some DIY tests that I might play around with at some point. But I guess the takeaway here is that a little intensity goes a long ways.

One thing I have to say is that your blog is always interesting!  Keep us posted...it's fun to learn.

Hope recovery is going well.  Sure seems like you're in a great position to continue on with training for the 50K.  Oh...don't worry about those rankings.  They probably aren't any more accurate than your HR zones.

nkrichards wrote:One thing I have to say is that your blog is always interesting!  Keep us posted...it's fun to learn.

Hope recovery is going well.  Sure seems like you're in a great position to continue on with training for the 50K.  Oh...don't worry about those rankings.  They probably aren't any more accurate than your HR zones.

Thanks, Nancy! Hold on to your hat, because it's about to get REALLY geeky here in a minute.

Recovery is going well. My hips were a little sore and I had a few aches and pains in my feet, but that was it. Well, other than the cardio-pulmonary system reminding me that I was close to redlining it a few days ago. Exactly *how* redlined I was might depend on the next thing I post...

So, the charts from the test don't make sense compared with the performance at the race Saturday.

The guy who did the test thinks it was because I've improved dramatically since I took the test, or that I was taking micro-rests that allowed me to clear the lactate out of system. That logic seems strained to me.

Maybe there's another explanation: Maybe he misread the data.

Here's the key chart:



This is a chart that tracked the various things being measured during the test.

For the purposes of this discussion, we are talking about these three things:

VO2(L) -- the volume of oxygen consumed, in liters

VCO2 (L) -- the volume of carbon dioxide exhaled, in liters

heart rate -- in beats per minute. (each horizontal line represents 25 bpm)

A key aspect of this test was establishing Lactate Threshold. The most accurate way to do it is to do blood samples as you run at different intensities and track the amount of blood lactate. It'll rise slowly then suddenly increase. That deflection point is the lactate threshold. That process is accurate but cumbersome.

So physiologists came up with a different way to determine it. They tracked how the body exchanged oxygen and carbon dioxide as the level of intensity (as measured by heart rate) increases. Both VO2(L) and VCO2(L) increase at a even rate until you hit what they call the second ventilatory threshold (VT2), when they begin to diverge noticeably. Mainly, VCO2(L) takes off.

First, an admission: I am not an expert in this, and I could be wrong.

Looking at the chart, I noticed that the green and blue lines climb more or less together and start to get closer to each other at about a HR of 140, where you see a weird bump. I think this was actually when he was taking my blood pressure, which was a huge disruption in concentration and threw me off. The lines continue to progress up, getting a little closer to each other, until HR 160 when the VCO2(L) jumps a LOT and stays above VO2(L) for the rest of the test.

To me, that looks more like a ventilatory threshold than that bump back at 143ish.

A HR of 160 is about where I was able to race marathons. It's where I've always thought my LT was near.

I'd write all this off as wishful thinking, were it not for what happened out on the mountain the other day. I was in zones that the original numbers said I had no business being in. Zones that should have blown me up. But I didn't blow up.

Since the zones are mostly calculated off of his estimate of LT, I did some recalculations to see what they'd look like if my LT was actually 160. Here's what I got:

Z1 (HR @ 80-85% LT): 128-136 (VT1 = 128)
Z2 (HR @ 90-95% LT): 144-152
Z3 (VT2/LT = 160): 152-160
Z4 (105% of LT): 160-168 - the "can sustain no more than one hour" level
Z5: 168-??*

*-I saw the HR monitor show 178 in the test but he threw that data point out, since he saw my VO2max happen before then. He picked 172.

What happened Saturday would make much more sense if this chart applied, wouldn't it?

Double-posting from my "No Drama" race report...

I've been noodling around trying to see if I can come up with a more "written" report for the Beacon Rock 25K this past weekend, but I'm having a difficult time finding a narrative thread to carry it along. Perhaps it's enough to say that this is the first race I've had since December 2009 that didn't involve one catastrophe or another during training or the race that challenged my sense of self and purpose.

So obviously, this would qualify as a good race.

But I don't want the notes I've taken to go to waste, so I offer them here now in the order I wrote them. Hopefully they sort of make sense.

Random moments from race:

-Pressing hard, eyes focused on the trail, when a little voice in my head says LOOK AROUND! I pause for a second, look up, and I am blown away by the beauty of the trees, logs and light all around me. It was one of those jaw-dropping sights that can’t even be captured in a  photo, and I almost missed it.

-After working hard on two climbs and picking my way through extremely rocky sections of trails unscathed, I hit a moderate trail through the forest. (Don's Cutoff Trail) It feels heavenly as I relax into it, changing my speed and angle with the ebb and flow of the trail beneath my feet. This is what I did all that other stuff for.

-I work my way through rocky sections slowly. I know if I pulverize my feet with a series of weird landings, I’ll be whimpering on the last big downhill sections on the road. I run less in some areas than I do move as quickly as I can.

-I catch up with an older gentleman and realize to some surprise that I’m actually passing someone. I stayed with him a while, chatting, and I guided him through the most technically challenging (and steep) part of the climb. This guy nearly cracked 3 hours in the marathon years ago and still runs cross-country, so he’s far from being newbie. On his shirt, he’d written in all-caps DO NOT RESUSCITATE and DON’T PADDLE ME, BRO! I mention it, and he says he means it. “Better than crapping on a bedpan in a nursing home.”

-One of my goals — not getting lapped by the winner of the 50K — dissolved before I’d reached the top of the second peak. I was power hiking, heart pounding in the 160s, when this young guy breezes past like he’s out for an easy run… except he’s going up this mountain THE SECOND TIME. I ask him if he’s doing the 50K, and he says yes. I get to joke “Oh, man! Lapped ALREADY?!” before he disappears around a corner up the mountain.

-I realize later that not getting lapped was a tough goal. The 50K people started an hour before the 25K. Still, I was only passed by the top five runners, so that’s not too bad. (I checked later and, if you take the hour head start into account, I only truly got lapped by the winner. Ha!)

-I pass another runner, a woman maybe a little younger than me who is having a rough time with the ascent. I ask her if she needs anything — I really wished I could help her somehow — but she said no, she had everything she needed. I pressed on, and I was happy when I saw her finish later.

-When I set out, I had this notion that I might be able to better my previous race here in 2011, even though the official race predictor on ultra signup.com had me finishing a few minutes slower. I’d done pretty well but battered my feet and ankles, leaving me limping and cursing for miles. I thought I might even be able to get in under 4 hours. But I didn’t realize until well into this race that I hadn’t taken into account how much better shape I’d been in 2011. (I’d just trained for a marathon the winter before — this race was the farthest I’ve run in well over a year.)  I started doing some mental math and realized that I’d probably finish close to my previous time, after all. And you know what? I was okay with that. This is where I’m at now.

-Mountain Dew is the most amazing tasting substance on the planet midway through a race like this, though it may not be a good idea to overdo it, unless you enjoy belching when it shakes up in your guts and mixes with the rest of your fuel.

-You know your brain is messing with you when it makes the song “You’re so vain” pop into your head as you’re going along casually thinking about the merits of races vs. simply going for runs in the woods. It just started up, all on its own. I wondered, where the hell did that come from? Then I figured it out and had a good chuckle at my own expense.

-I wasn’t feeling so terrific in the last couple of miles, with my stomach being off and my legs starting to fatigue. But I was surprised to pass someone who pulled away from me much earlier int the day. His quads were thrashed, and he’d gone to walking. Felt sorry for him — been there, done that — but I was glad to see him finish a while after I did.

-At the end of the big downhill from the mountain there’s a final quarter-mile stretch of uphill pavement to the group camp where they’d set up the start and finish. As I was ready to hit the road, I was thinking I’d do my best to run up it. That is, until I turned the corner and saw how steep the road was. Uh, never mind. I power hiked it, too, getting passed by the first place woman (fifth overall) on the way up. Once I got to the top of the rise and made the left turn into the campground, I was greeted with applause from runners and their family scattered about, then a bigger cheer as I hit the finish line. A little kid was waiting there with a squirt gun. He started spraying me, saying it was his job to cool runners off. It felt awesome.

-Alita was there the whole time. We’d arrived at 6:30 a.m. to help with sign-in, and she was working to keep the food station stocked for hours as the post-race party rolled on. She saw me run, amused folks at the pizza oven by yelling “Yes! He didn’t die!” and gave me a happy greeting after the squirt gun kid lost interest and moved on.

-Alita had agreed to volunteer until 5:30, so we stayed for several hours after I finished. I hung out, drank a couple of beers and a good amount of water, and snacked on wood-fired pizza and Doritos while listening to a bluegrass band and watching kids on a giant slip and slide they’d set up on the lawn. It was a pretty sweet afternoon.

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So, that's it! It has left me wondering (as I have wondered for a while) if I will ultimately be happier focusing on shorter, sub-ultra trail race distances, swapping ambition for the simple enjoyment of being out there in beautiful areas with nice people. I'm not quite ready to make that move, though. I'm still getting back in shape from a long dry period and I want to see how it goes.

Since this IS a training blog, after all..

Walk: 2.3 miles

Weather: Sunny, gorgeous, 70°

A lunchtime walk, testing out the systems after the Beacon Rock 25K last Saturday. My ankles were a little stiff, but only slightly. Looks like we're good to go! (I'll be sparing myself high-intensity work for a bit, though.)

My theory on your HR data:

You were severely undertrained when you took the test.  Or overtrained.  Either way, that test is no longer valid.  With your statement that your marathon HR is 160...  Yeah, definitely not valid.  Marathon HR should correspond to high Z3/low Z4, higher if you're more experienced.  

Side note: the TOP END of Z4 is supposed to be what you can sustain in a race for 1hr.  In a self-run TT, it's your 30min HR.*

I'd say you were likely dehydrated to some degree on race day.  You were also very excited.  

Since the test is invalid, why not *run a 30min TT on your own?  Find a long, VERY gradual incline (1%) or flat road, run 30min HARD, and take your ave HR for the final 20min of the test.  (Don't run it as a 10+20, run it as 30min straight through, even effort.)  Then you'll have more accurate data.

Once you have that data, though, the answer to running better is going to be what it always is: run more.  Miles per week = ultra success.  Our friend Wendy just demolished her first 100 following that adage, and I truly believe it to be true.

Mike MacLellan wrote:My theory on your HR data:

You were severely undertrained when you took the test.  Or overtrained.  Either way, that test is no longer valid.  With your statement that your marathon HR is 160...  Yeah, definitely not valid.  Marathon HR should correspond to high Z3/low Z4, higher if you're more experienced.  

Side note: the TOP END of Z4 is supposed to be what you can sustain in a race for 1hr.  In a self-run TT, it's your 30min HR.*

I'd say you were likely dehydrated to some degree on race day.  You were also very excited.  

Since the test is invalid, why not *run a 30min TT on your own?  Find a long, VERY gradual incline (1%) or flat road, run 30min HARD, and take your ave HR for the final 20min of the test.  (Don't run it as a 10+20, run it as 30min straight through, even effort.)  Then you'll have more accurate data.

Once you have that data, though, the answer to running better is going to be what it always is: run more.  Miles per week = ultra success.  Our friend Wendy just demolished her first 100 following that adage, and I truly believe it to be true.

Hm. Interesting. I presume a track would work for the test, as well. When you say "hard" do you mean comfortably hard, or hanging-on-by-the-edge-of-your-teeth hard? I'm envisioning just under a 5K feeling. Is that about right?

I might give that a try after my body has fully recovered from the race.

So the result of the test would give me the top of Z4, or my LT?

Hard means that after 30min you're absolutely done - you couldn't do a 31st minute unless you had a bear (or whatever animal you have an irrational fear of) chasing you.  A track would work, yes.  Your aveHR for the last 20min of that test is your LTHR, in theory.  You'd base your zones on that.  

Definitely give yourself time to recover.

Mike MacLellan wrote:Hard means that after 30min you're absolutely done - you couldn't do a 31st minute unless you had a bear (or whatever animal you have an irrational fear of) chasing you.  A track would work, yes.  Your aveHR for the last 20min of that test is your LTHR, in theory.  You'd base your zones on that.  

Definitely give yourself time to recover.

Well, that could be interesting. Why do I think it'll give me a LTHR of 180?

I'd put it closer to high 160s, based on what you've posted here.  For reference, mine running is 170-175 (haven't actually tested it in years), cycling is 167-172 depending on if I'm in shape or not.

Mike MacLellan wrote:I'd put it closer to high 160s, based on what you've posted here.  For reference, mine running is 170-175 (haven't actually tested it in years), cycling is 167-172 depending on if I'm in shape or not.

Aha! I thought this test looked familiar. The guy who did the lab testing, and a cyclist friend of mine, both recommended that I do the same thing. Here's a link: Joel Friel's Quick Guide to Setting Zones.

If a Friel test is supposed to be so accurate at setting LT and other zones, why the heck did I bother dropping $100 for a treadmill test that seems to have yielded data that was useless after a few weeks? Especially since the zones the test set up were all pegged off of lactate threshold? (I mean, really: Whenever I see a random percent figure applied to another number, I know we've moved away from precision and entered the land of statistical modeling.) Grr.

Mike: I need to loop back on something you said earlier:

Mike MacLellan wrote:Side note: the TOP END of Z4 is supposed to be what you can sustain in a race for 1hr. In a self-run TT, it's your 30min HR.

Are you SURE that's the top end of Z4? Because the chart I got showed my LTHR as the BOTTOM of Z4, with the top of Z4 being pegged at 105% of LT. Because if that's the case, then wouldn't I need to adjust the 30-minute test results to account for that?

(I'm still irritated that I apparently can't find a real-world corollary to Maffetone's forumula, so I could double-check it in the grand n=1 experiment that is me. Ultimately, I guess, I suppose it's probably close enough to do the job. 180-51=129, or 134 if I apply the "hasn't been injured and is improving" bonus. Which kind of neatly fits into that "adjusted" Z1 that I calculated if my LT was closer to 160.)