Did My Lactate Threshold Test. Now What?

Better image here, the text doesn't display so clean.

http://i.imgur.com/rnctWRF.png

I don't know why you think you're out of shape because your LTHR is "high". I haven't done a field test in a year but for the past 2 years it's been 174 for me, which means my Z2 is 148 - 158. When I started, Z2 was ~8:00/min mile and at my peak, I was able to run closer to ~7:10 at Z2 HR. Now with my jacked up ankle and no running for a while...well nothing close to that. Zones are just that...zones. They can change but don't move much if you're in shape. If you follow a HITS program, you'll have Z2 and Z4/Z5 intervals a lot. Doing that was slowly make you faster at the same HR.

So is your LTHR 153 or is the top end of Zone 2 153? I'm assuming the latter since that's what you said.

According to Friel's % Charts that puts your LTHR at 172. Which I am fairly sure has me beat by a long shot.

The important of these zones is to know about how hard you are training and when to run in each zone. You can go back and manipulate your max HR in your Garmin to get it to put you in the zones that you want it to be in. Or you can go in a put in custom zones. Or you can just know in your head what zones you want to be running in.

Maffetone Method put your zone 2 HR right at 151. So that's pretty close as well.

But your garmin had it about right when it said that 158 to 170 was zones 3 and 4.

Just because you have never been "out of shape" doesn't mean that you have developed an aerobic base. Which is the foundation of all endurance training. To me running a 11:30/mile in zone 3/4 means you haven't developed it enough yet either. You are probably the kind of athlete that can get out there and make the most of it. I was in the zone 3 trap as well. Zone three feels good. You're going hard enough to make it feel like your doing some work but your not going hard enough to make yourself faster.

If your hips/knees/ankles are handling all of the running that you are doing then that is a great start. My recommendation is that for 80% of the time you are running you are between 145-150. Then for the other 20% you are in zone 4/5 which is 165-175(ish). So if you are doing runs of 45, 30, 30, 20, 20 which is 145 min. You need to be in zone 2 for 116min and zone 4/5 for 29min. So, you could take your short runs and do a 5min warm up in zone 2 then run 400m/800m/1600m repeats for 15min. Rest in between is up to you, enough rest you can do them all but not so much that you are wasting time.

For the most part your LTHR will not change much as you get in more/better shape. But, what will change is the amount of work you can do at that HR.





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Friel Zones.png (29KB - 6 downloads)

Top of Z2 for me is 162ish. That can be anywhere from a 7:45 mile to a 9:00 mile depending on weather, fatigue, and a whole bunch of other things. But I have seen the pace drop for the same HR as I've moved through base and build phases. Don't sweat it. Just trust the number train smart. You'll see the numbers drop all the way around.

Thanks for the feedback. Well from all of the info I've seen on this site, I guess what I saw that I didn't like was how high my HR was at Z2. I guess the point of this info is, with time and training my Z2 HR will drop significantly, hopefully? I guess I'm not out of shape, but I'm out aerobically out of shape and that's what I hope to change.

I'm going to look into HITS, I know that the trainer was telling me that my work should be mostly Z2 with some Z4 in there.

I really appreciate your feedback, thanks for taking the time to respond.

Thanks for the encouragement, that's what I needed. I feel better about it today, can't wait to get back to training.

Thanks for this reply, that's what I was misunderstanding! I was thinking for some reason my HR would drop, but it's my pace that will drop with progress. Thanks again.