In reviewing Heart Rate Monitor Training for the Compleat Idiot, author John L. Parker, Jr. sums up its big contribution to a training program pretty succinctly on page seven: “Alternate hard days with easy days”.

He also calls this “The General All-Purpose Training Principle That Everyone Agrees With But Nobody Follows”.

I’m trying to do this myself, and yes, I’m finding it hard to follow, which is likely the reason why nobody follows it. What’s hard? Interestingly, it’s not the hard days–the days I go all out or close to all out, doing intervals or trying to build speed.

It’s the days that are supposed to be easy.

Looking at the numbers that I figured out about my heart rate from this book, an “easy” day for me means keeping my heart rate under 146.8–essentially 146 or lower. A “hard” day means keeping my heart rate at 165.4 or higher.

While it’s an effort, especially as I improve my fitness, to keep my heart rate above 165, it’s more of an effort to keep the rate below 146.8. It involves going very, very slowly–sometimes even walking–on my long and medium length runs. It’s really hard when I’m running when someone else, or being passed, because I just don’t feel like I’m working hard enough.

Discipline is the key. Even this week, trying to recover from my hard race on Sunday, I tried to instead do a hard three mile run on Tuesday–and it was an abysmal failure. Going more slowly–but not slowly enough–on my next two runs was hard because of the peer pressure of running with someone else who isn’t on this program–and getting left in the dust by that person despite cheating and going a little harder than 146.8 didn’t really help.

It’s amazing how hard it is to go slowly. I’m hoping it gets easier as time goes on.
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