Hi all,

As you probably are aware by now I am well into my first season of serious racing and training and feeling quite well at the way it's all going. Since starting off the racing in March with 10k's and now with a Half Marathon and a 10 miler it seems that I can run and maintain a much higher heart rate than I initially expected.

To explain more, I monitor regularly my RHR which is around 48bpm, and whilst training I strictly adhere to the heart monitor training techniques of easy/hard days and my lactic threshold is calculated at 158bpm with a maximum of 172bpm.

Now when racing the long races (10 - 13 miles) I do tend to race (with a pace between 6 - 7.5 minute/miles) and hold for the first half of the race a heart rate of around 165 - 170bpm and for the second half this can go up to 175 with it peaking for the obligatory 200mtr sprint finish at the end of around 180 - 185.

I tend to recover quite quickly afterwards, although for the first minute my RHR tends only to reduce by around 30 - 40 and does carry on reducing steadily after that.

I'm assuming that this is conditioning and maybe I need to re-evaluate my maximum threshold, or is their a concern there?  

Thanks Helen, I think you are right as the easy sessions are a little too easy and by inceasing the MHR to say 182 would put me in more comfortable zones throughout, and the early morning runs will be a tad quicker.

I'm down to 3 or 4 10k's over the next two months so I am considering winding down my long runs of 14 - 16 miles to about 10 - 12 miles and start to build up again for the Birmingham half in October.