Day 319, 46 To Go

November 15, 2013

Yesterday I talked about my boredom with my current training plan.  This is still true today, but I have come to the realization that I am just out of luck for the rest of the year.  I will have to just suck it up.

That's fine, however, I won't just sit still and let the year go by without some research and preparation for next year.  I have already started reading up on training plans and new training methods.  One that has caught my eye is something called Polarized Training.

Polarized Training simply means that you split up your training into sections: basically very easy or very hard.  I have seem multiple models, but the bottom line is that you do 75% - 80% of your training very easy, and the rest is either just very hard, or a mix of very hard and hard.  Easy runs are run at a HR of less than 80% of max and very hard is over 80%.  Hard are tempo runs and they would take up the middle part of about 80% to 90%.

The variation that I have seen is that some studies show a mix of 80% very easy and 20% very hard with no just hard efforts.  This would take away threshold training.  This is a staple of many runner's training.  However, if you view some of the research, it appears that this training method produces great results.

Here is where I first heard about the method: Polarized Training

If you do a search on the Internet, you will find a plethora of other articles.  I have only read a few so I will have to do some more research, but I like the idea.  If you think about it, if you do most of your runs easy, you will be well rested and able to push really hard on your hard days.  This will allow you to reach your maximal potential!

Here are my numbers:

Time: 30:00

Distance: 3.12 miles

Pace: 9:37/m

Max Pace: 8:31/m

Calories: 338

Avg HR: 128

Max HR: 135

This was another easy day for me.  I guess I am sort of doing polarized training now...without the very hard efforts!  I won't actually change my training method until next year, but at least so far, I am leaning towards this method.  What do you think?  Please weigh in and share if you have any experience with this or know someone who has!!

Run for Life!!