Marathon By 40

I know cardio training requires you to slow down, but this seems ridiculous.

Keith recently posted on his personal experience training to increase aerobic capacity. He does a good job describing it like this:

One of the most important muscle groups for endurance athletes is the heart and lungs—the muscles that define aerobic capacity.  Simply put, aerobic capacity is your body’s ability to transport the necessary amount of oxygen to your muscles for them to operate efficiently for long periods of time.  Aerobic capacity is also called “base” for short and is often referred to as an endurance athlete’s “engine.”

The Run/Walk Half Marathon training program that I’m starting on 12/29 calls for my run/walks to stay between 60%-75% max heart rate. I know that my runs regularly push me way beyond that. Reading Keith’s post and knowing that my upcoming plan calls for measured pace, I decided to experiment with just how slow I would have to go to stay within the plan’s boundaries.

When I went out for my 5K today, I purposely watched my watch to slow down when I crossed 75%. Ugh. I wasn’t able to sustain a pace faster than 16′38″ without pushing my BPM above 75%. I wasn’t “running” at all. I couldn’t even jog for more than 100 yards without going above the limit.

This leaves me with a quandary on how to approach my upcoming plan. I will likely:

1. Stick to the 60%<>75% levels for the remaining 10 days of the 30-in-30 streak to see if I can improve my pace within this boundary, and / or
2. Ignore the aerobic training plan for now, and train as usual for the half, and / or
3. Get an aerobic assessment after the race to see what my true max is, and follow a rate-improvement plan before my training plan starts for the White Rock Marathon in December.

I certainly want to improve my aerobic capacity. But do I have the patience to work on it before the half marathon in April?