Competitive trail runner Alana Doyle has spent the last 12 weeks training with a heart rate monitor in order to unearth her inner racer. Here’s what she learnt along the way.

 

1. A V02 max test is a valuable investment

The purpose of a VO2 max test is crucial for training and using a HRM (heart rate monitor) correctly. Without establishing your correct target zones you will always be left guessing how hard is hard and, more importantly, how easy is easy.

2. Easy can never be too easy

With a HRM to guide me, and the Polarflow App to log my sessions, I was now accountable for those hard and easy days. Over the 12 weeks of vigilantly training with a heart rate monitor I noticed, when looking at the stats, that overall I was often going too hard but never going easy enough. You have to slow down A LOT and it feels like you’re going nowhere. But this is where marginal gains are formed and over time your speed naturally develops.

3. Run time, not distance

Time on your feet is always more important than clocking kilometres. I discovered that a training plan using heart rate zones focuses on time in a specific HR zone rather than accumulating kilometres in each training session.

4. Never look to excel at a 10-K time trial the weekend before a major distance event

You can undo months of training by being silly and getting carried away at a 10km time trial, or race, too close to a long distance goal event. Sharpening up speed just before an event is an important part of a training programme but it can also undo months of hard work. I learnt from my mistake running a 10km race all-out, a mere five days before tackling a 65km event.

 

 

5. Abandoning a race takes huge amounts of courage

Always think long-term. The damage you will do to your body now can put you out of running for months and even forever. Never think of the race as a goal but rather let the goal be the journey of getting there. I trained continuously for three months with two goal races in mind: Hout Bay Trail Challenge and the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon and, in both instances, those races had to be abandoned. I know that for my long-term running goals this was the wiser decision.

6. There is a major difference between RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) and HRT (Heart Rate Training)

It takes a long time, and large amounts of patience, to be able to know when you are running in the correct HR zone using RPE. Even when you think you have mastered it, it is just guesswork. A HRM takes out the guessing.

7. To progress you need a range of running efforts

Without a HRM it’s almost impossible to understand intensity. In short, if your easy days aren’t easy enough, your hard days will suffer.

 

 

8. Heart rate training is not a social method of training

Let’s be honest, when training in groups, more often than not, someone’s competitive streak comes out and the pace goes up. You then let your ego get the better of you and your planned session goes out the window. Be prepared to train alone on days when easy means easy.

9. Self-Control

Heart Rate training requires discipline. Period. No longer can you just go for a run… A run now becomes a session and sessions are the building blocks of a long-term goal.

Alana Doyle is a committed trail and road runner and has completed events like the famed 160km UTMB (Ultra Trail Mont Blanc) run in France. This year her target events include the Hout Bay Challenge Trail Run and the Sanlam Cape Town marathon.

Follow Alana’s running journey here:

Week 1: Running Hard Is Easy

Week 2: My First Win… But at What Cost?

Week 3: When The Heart Says Go, But The Body Says No

Week 4: Life’s Curveballs

Week 5: The Race of your Life

Week 6: When The Heart Falls In Line

Week 7: A Little More Self-Control, Please!

Week 8: Rest But No Rest

Week 9: Cape Town Marathon Derailed

Week 10: A Time for Everything

Week 11: The Sound of Settling

Learn more from Polar about How To Measure Your Resting Heart Rate.

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