I would interested in what would the results would be if instead of
Lydiard's aerobic base building you did Aaken's and then topped off the
cake with ALL of Lydiards final phases, especially the structured hill
resistance phase, I think most people these days when following the
Lydiard schedules except for maybe the die hard Lydiard geeks, skip the
hill resistance phase and instead run a lot of hilly courses during base
building as a replacement for that work which I think can sometimes work
against you depending on how hilly the course is and how far over the
aerobic threshold you go. (I have a tendency to think that out of all
Lydiard's phases the hill resistance phase is the most crucial.)
I was planning on running as usual till the end of December then doing
the final Lydiard phases starting on the 1st of January which would last
for 3 months then doing a small series of 5k's and 10k's within the
first 6 months of the year to see where I'm at and then doing a half or
full marathon in the later part of the year to see how my 5 and 10k
times are translating over to my marathon times. Usually this is a good
way to see how aerobically fit you are vs. how aerobically fit you think
you are.
Last night I went out on the trails and using the MAF 180 formula which
is 180 minus your age, mine is 154, I strapped that piece of crap heart
rate monitor on and kept my heart rate below 154 for about an hour and
15 minutes, I felt really good afterward, I felt like it was a very
effective workout, the kind of workout where when your done you kind of
smile to yourself and you're like... all hell yeah!
Along the way I found some kinks in my form which slow running tends to
expose a little more so it was effective in the learning sense as well.
I think for the rest of the year I'm going to aim to stay below that
heart rate for my daily sessions to top of my aerobic tank.
Tomorrow or Sunday I'll be doing a 26-27 mile training run with my wife
and I'm going to keep it below 154 the duration and see how that feels
in the following days to decide for sure if I want to finish out the
year with that type of conditioning. Ideally from what I've read so far
you'd want to stick to low heart rate training for a bit longer but I've
been base building for a year and 9 months now and it's time to put the
icing on the cake.
The good news is that I just found a soft strap heart rate monitor, so
I'm hoping that will stick to my rib cage much better instead of choking
me to death.
