PBIM HM with Garmin Training Plan

 This is the running post agan after 4 years.  Mainly due to lack of event that I joined in 2019 and no event organized during the year of 2020 and 2021 due to COVID.  Starting 2022, running event started again.

However, in 2021, only virtual running events were being organized.  For the last 2~3 Virtual HM, I find it harder and hard to complete it.  Thus, I decided to follow a free trainng plan.  Garmin Training plan was chosen since I am using Garmin watch.

Throughout the whole training plan, I did follow more than 90% of the training, except for cross training.  The training that I skipped was due to either raining or personal engagement.  Out of 80 trainings, only 2 activities that I skipped due to personal reason.

By following Garmin Training plan, I managed to increase my weekly mileage to more than 30km without serious pain.  Previously, when I run on myself, whenever I reached weekly mileage of 20km, I started to feel pain at my leg.

There are 2 main differences between the training plan and I run by myseft.  Firstly, the training plan ask for cool down (walk) of 5~10 mins after each training session that I didn't do that when I run myself.  Secondly, there are variety of running style, Interval, Easy, etc in Garmin Training Plan while I always run at almost the same pace when I run myself.  These are the 2 main different that I am able to log more than 30km per week, I think.

Although I am not able to improve my time after joining the Garmin Training Plan, but I didn't feel out of breath by running with this pace, not like a few HMs before.  I guess this is the improvement from the plan.

Following is the HR vs Pace for HM from my available data, ie. 10.6sec/km improvement for 5s increase in HR.

As for this particular run, the pace vs HR is as follow.

HM in Storm

It is really a true experience for me to run in thunderstorm.  The wind was very strong until I felt the pain as rain drop hitting my face.

With lack of training, the last 3 km was really suffering.  In all the previous run, I felt excited when reaching 18km and wanted to run faster too complete the race, although not able to...  But this time, at 18km, I really felt like to walk for 3km to complete the race.  Anyway, I dragged myself with slow jog to complete it.

The heavy rain started at 16km on the bridge.  My eyes could hardly open due to the rain and have to use my mouth for breathing while the pace was down a bit to around 7min/km.

Except for the 1st 2 km where I was getting myself away from the crowd, I was running in a manageable pace of around 6:30min/km with heartrate of around 170bpm.  I guess that could me my space for 10km without really training...

Adding this run statistic into the heart rate vs pace will get the following:-

Comparing to other HM in 2018, I experienced a higher heart rate that could due to lack of training.

HM Heart Rate Trend

While I focus a lot on the heart rate, my pace has been reducing tremendously recently.  My hope for training with heart rate (MAF) can help to increase weekly mileage without injury was wrong.  I have been suffering from Plantar Fasciitis for the last 2 months.  This makes the coming PBIM to be challenging as I have reduced my weekly mileage to less than 10km/week for almost the whole October.

However, I took the chance to summary my HM pace trend together with HeartRate as follows:-

As the pace slower recently the average heartrate also reducing.  I will interpret this as no much change in terms of heart rate vs pace.

Plotting heartrate vs pace will get the graph below:-

Hopefully, to run at 170bpm I can be with pace around 6 min/km.

MAF Heart Rate Training

After reading the articles regarding MAF training (https://philmaffetone.com/want-speed-slow-down/) and with the hope that I can increase my weekly mileage to around 40km per week without injury, I had decided to following this method of training for 3 month while increasing weekly mileage. By following the formula of 180-age as the max MAF training heart rate, I find it very difficult to run at 140 bpm. With my run of longer than 10 km, it is very difficult to keep below the max MAF heart rate without a walking rest.  A few days before end of my 1st month of trying, I came across another article from StrengthRunning (http://strengthrunning.com/2015/02/maffetone-method-and-base-training/).  So, I have decided to deviate a bit from MAF training recommended by Dr. Maffetone by adding in strides (suggested by http://strengthrunning.com/2018/02/base-training-fundamentals/) at the end of the easy run.

Following is my running using MAF method for 1st month (analyzed using http://www.graphmyrun.com/).

From above charts, Jan 23 and Jan 25 runs were with wider spread of heart rate due to slightly hilly routes and I was just learning to run by heart rate.  However, starting Feb, it seems that I can control my heart rate throughout the run better.  The higher max heart rate in Jan 30 run was due to hilly route.


For 2nd month, I have decided to modify the MAF to include strides in the training.

Here's my base training plan in the coming month:-

• Keep the max MAF heart rate as base.
• Add strides at the end of run with max time of 10%, ie. if I plan a run of 40 mins, I will add in 4 mins of strides.  This to ensure 90% of training time is within max MAF heart rate.
• Add in strength training and stretches in my weekly schedule!

The training zones on my first run with strides is as below:-

Still able to keep 90% of time within max MAF heart rate with 20s strides (40 steps, ~ 100m) for 5 times.  Will practice the above for 2 runs during weekday and long run during weekend.