I have become a Garminite. What is a Garminite? Well, we are a band of athletes that have had our VO2Max tested and now know, with the sort of clarity reserved only for the possessed, exactly what my body is doing at every moment of the day--if I were to wear a heart rate montior, that is.
So, I now know at what beats per minute when my body is burning fat (good), or burning carbohydrates (OK for up to an hour) or essentially eating itself alive (OK for a few minutes at a time, and then only at the end of a race). So now I've programmed these heart rate zones into my Garmin and from now on will run at whatever pace is required to maintain the target zone (mostly zone 2 for long weekend runs).
The disappointment for me today is not to discover that I am NOT a physiological phenome--that illusion left the station several years ago--but rather that, perhaps, I have to slow down for my long runs. Now, I say "perhaps" because since I've been run/walking, I may be able to run the run portions as 'fast' as I've been running (low 10 min miles with an overall average of around 10:30). I feel as though I've made so much progress this year just to get to that pace, and now I learn that I may have to slow down to stay within the z2 range. It's one thing for people to learn that they've been running too fast on their long runs, but completely another to learn that they may have to slow down to where they started from after having made progress. Sigh.
I'll report more on this as I train overt he next six weeks. I have this time before my next half marathon, so I intend to follow this method religiously and see how I do in the race. That'll be a good test, I think.
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