Quick background: 52yo recreational runner. Heavier than most runners (5’9" and fluctuate between 215-222 lbs), which may be relevant here. Ran half-marathon this morning…2:02 beating 2:05 goal. Use a sports watch and have watched and used heartrate MUCH more in training for this race than ever before.
Today’s race was NOT very hilly overall (~250 ft difference between high and low points), but had rolling hills throughout. Approximate course is detailed here… https://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/1614097987. For my “hill” strategy, I decided to commit almost 100% to an “even perceived effort” approach, which is what I understand most experts recommend. I was also monitoring my HR to back my estimation of perceived effort. While my HR did pick up maybe 10 bpm on hills today, I kept it close to even.
The result?..I was SPEEDING by almost everybody near me going downhill, but was also getting regularly passed going up hills. On this not very hilly course, my fastest mile was 8:15 and slowest was 10:26 (with a 9:19 average).
So the question…who’s doing it wrong? Are the vast majority of runners (at least those near my pace) taking the wrong approach to hills? Am I missing something and perhaps have a better strategy available to me? Or maybe are we all “doing it right” and my extra weight simply dictates that I should use a different hill approach than other comparable, but lighter, runners?
The longest distance I’ve ever run is 3 miles. I did it at a pace of 10’ 30” per mile. After 2.5 miles I’m in HRZ4. I can’t get back into zone 2 without walking for a while. When I try to do “Zone 2 training” I have to run/walk/run/walk to drop back down below 3.0. — Eventually I’d like to do a 10k and longer, but currently that will put me in zone 4.5+ for anything longer than 3 miles. And i understand that I probably shouldn’t be running in zone 4 for 30-180 minutes. I’m a 53 year old male who’s been running for 2 months. — Any suggestions?
A run/walk approach for most of your runs is absolutely reasonable. Early in my most recent training cycle as I was building up mileage, I used the run/walk on all runs other than my planned-fast workouts to help me keep my HR under a specific level. Just like accepting that going up hills slow is the right approach, a run/walk mix might force swallowing the ego a bit but it’s smart. If going 10K requires a run/walk mix given your current fitness levels, I see zero problems with that.
Understand and accept that whatever your goals, this is likely to be a long-term process, but improvement absolutely will come and it feels tremendously satisfying.