Polar RS800sd Review

Introduction

A little over a year ago, I picked up a Polar RS800sd to help analyze my exercise regime more accurately and find ways to improve it. Since then, I've been using this tool extensively for my day-to-day workouts and have spent a lot of time getting to know everything about it. In that time, I started a serious running program and progressed to running a half marathon, so I also have a wide range of experience as both a beginner all the way up to an endurance athlete.

When I was first investigating the myriad of choices in running computers last year, I found it extremely difficult to find any detailed information about them. The manufacturers had basic specifications and user manuals to read through, but the reviews that existed either had very little detail or were simply a re-hashing of marketing information put out by the manufacturer. As such, I figured that it would make sense to share my experiences about this tool in a good deal of detail for anyone who might be investigating them at this point in time.


Features

• Speed and distance recording via S3 footpod, providing accurate readings of both overall and instantaneous measurements.
• W.I.N.D. heart rate monitor measures heart rate with single beat resolution.
  
• Barometric altimeter measures elevation changes more accurately than GPS-based systems.
• Measurement of running cadence and stride length.
• Configurable interval training features with alarms for maintaining speed, heart rate, etc.
• Lap markers can be added manually or automatically to provide context to raw data.
  
• Coded 2.4GHz radio communication is less susceptible to interference than the 5kHz system most Polar running computers use.
• Compact S3 footpod is significantly smaller and lighter than its predecessor.
• All exercise displays can be customized, with six individual screens that can be selected when in training mode.
  
• Monitors mileage of up to two pairs of shoes in the watch itself.
  
• IrDA computer interface for uploading training data and configuring watch.
• Polar ProTrainer 5 software provides tools for analyzing exercise data, and maintains a detailed training log.
• Can perform a number of simple tests to determine physiological parameters such as VO2Max.
  
• Heart rate monitor, footpod and watch all have user-replaceable batteries (albeit different batteries for each).
• Optional G3 GPS pod can be purchased for use instead of the S3 (RS800CX can use both simultaneously).
  

Components

There are three basic components to the RS800sd, the watch itself, the S3 footpod and the HRM strap. In addition to displaying the readings, the watch is also the component that collects and stores the data from the other sensors. The S3 footpod attaches to the shoe and is responsible for recording speed, distance, cadence and stride length. Finally, the HRM strap goes around the runner's chest and monitors the electrical activity in their heart, relaying basic heart rate data as well as R-R data (covered later in this article) to the wrist unit. I'll address each of these three components individually in the next few sections.


The S3 Footpod



Probably the most important component of the RS800sd, the S3 footpod can either be attached to the shoelaces (using a provided accessory) or placed inside of a special cavity in some Adidas running shoes. This small unit contains a set of accelerometers which are used to record the movement of the foot in three dimensions. A microcontroller in the S3 then translates that data into speed, distance, cadence and stride length values relayed to the wrist unit via a wireless signal.



Much smaller than its predecessor, the S3 measures a tiny 55x40x13mm and is barely noticeable when worn on the foot. A small battery compartment on the base of the sensor allows the user to replace the CR2430 battery (~$3.50CDN and lasts approx. three months). Other than that, there isn't a whole lot to say about it - it is turned on automatically by the wrist unit when necessary, so it has no buttons or controls of its own.

Footpod (Inertial) vs GPS

When looking at running computers, most products fall into one of two different categories - footpod-based systems like this, and GPS-based systems like those offered by Garmin. As mentioned above, inertial systems use a sensor attached to the shoelaces to monitor the movement of the foot and convert this into speed and distance information. GPS-based systems, on the other hand, capture and store a runner's location every second and calculate speed and distance using that information. Each of these systems has its advantages and disadvantages, and it is important to understand these characteristics when deciding which system to go with.

As footpods are a closed system, they aren't reliant on any external signals like GPS-based systems are. As such, users don't have to worry about buildings or tree canopies blocking reception of GPS signals (or waiting for the watch to acquire a fix in the first place). Further, as footpods are monitoring the movement of the foot rather than the movement of the runner, they can provide accurate readings when running on a treadmill. Finally, since footpods are measuring the gait cycle, advanced systems like the RS800sd can provide additional readings such as cadence and stride length that GPS-based systems have no way to monitor.

The downside is that as footpods are reliant on the movement of the foot they are only useful for tracking running performance. As GPS-based systems simply monitor the absolute movement of the athlete they can also be used to track performance in other sports (eg cycling). Further, as GPS-based systems log the exact route that was taken they also provide context that is not available when using inertial systems. While not critical, it can be helpful to have this information when looking back on previous workouts (eg a slowdown that might appear random on simple curves makes more sense when one sees that they were crossing a street at the time and had to deal with traffic).

Accuracy

The other major difference between Footpod and GPS-based systems is the nature of the error they introduce into the readings. Civilian GPS systems can only generally provide readings accurate to about 15 meters, which is quite a significant error when on foot. Fortunately, the components of this error that effect speed and distance measurements are random in nature so they tend to get averaged out over multiple samples. The result is that these systems can provide accurate readings over the long term (ie kilometer/mile splits, total distance run, etc.), but they aren't very good at providing instantaneous measurements (ie current pace, short intervals, etc.).

Footpods, on the other hand, can provide extremely accurate short and long term measurements but are dependent on accurate calibration. As these systems are reliant on monitoring the movement of the foot, variances in the gait cycle from person to person can introduce error into the readings. Unlike GPS, however, this error is static in nature - that is, it will repeatedly over/underestimate by a fixed percentage for any given gait. Thanks to this it is possible to eliminate much of this error by running a known distance (eg a few laps of a 400m track) and dialing in the difference as a calibration (ie if it reads 1616m after four laps, the watch will take 1% off each future reading).

The complexity with this is that it is dependent on the gait cycle of the runner, so any changes (due to running at significantly different speeds, aging/new shoes, injuries, etc.) can require re-calibration of the system. In my experience, however, once it was calibrated gait variances never added up to an error larger than 1% during the time that I've used it. I have, however, seen variances as large as 4-5% when replacing an old pair of shoes with a new pair without recalibrating (example). As such, it is still wise to calibrate it every once and a while to make sure that it is still giving you accurate readings. This is especially important for inexperienced runners whose technique may be in flux as they gain experience and strength.

In short, inertial systems have the advantage of significantly more accurate instantaneous measurements than GPS-based systems. When kept calibrated, both inertial and GPS-based systems will provide comparable accuracy over longer distances. When calibration isn't done, however, GPS will often provide higher accuracy for many people so they can be a lower maintenance option. Naturally, the decision of which system is better suited to a runner will depend on their priorities.

Cadence and Stride Length

As this is a relatively unique feature of this particular model, I feel that it is important to make a quick mention of this capability. When enabled, the RS8oosd can record and display these two biomechanical properties which can be quite valuable for many runners. Stride length is simply recorded as an average at the end of each lap, so its usefulness is limited. Cadence, however, is recorded every second and can be displayed in real time.

For a beginning runner this information can be quite useful, as slow turnover is a common problem for many people. Providing a real-time readout of this value allows the runner to carefully monitor their cadence, and makes doing drills to increase one's cadence much easier. When looking over the cadence plot after a run this can also be quite instructive as it gives the runner a better idea of how they dealt with it when they weren't actively paying attention.

For more advanced runners, cadence readings can also be a very useful tool. Over the course of a long run, the muscles in a runner's legs begin to get tired and their cadence will begin to involuntarily fall. This forces us to take longer strides to maintain speed which, in turn, increases the load on the muscles and accelerates the rate at which they get tired. By monitoring the cadence value and correcting for this as soon as it begins, endurance and overall performance can be improved. Further, looking over the cadence plots after the run will give the wearer a good idea of exactly when this began to happen and how it progressed, allowing them to make changes to prevent it from happening in any future runs.


Polar W.I.N.D. HRM Strap



The HRM strap is a relatively simple device which, as its name implies, measures the wearer's heart rate and relays that data to the wrist unit. This unit is basically a very simple EKG, which uses an integrated microcontroller to look for the QRS complex (each one triggering the heart to beat once), and sends a signal back to the wrist unit each time it sees it. The watch then averages out the rate at which these beats occur (on a per-second basis) and, if configured to do so, displays them for the user to monitor in real time. Naturally, this data is also stored in the memory of the watch for post-run analysis.

The strap consists of two basic components - a small sensor pod (shown above) and the strap itself (shown below). The former contains the transmitter, the monitoring electronics and a small user-replaceable CR2025 battery (still on my factory cell, but Polar estimates it lasts about two years). The later contains the sensor pads themselves and attaches to the pod via two metal snaps. Unlike many other heart rate monitoring straps, the sensor pads of this unit are made completely out of a soft textile material. As such, it conforms to the shape of the runner's body and will generally record more reliable data than units that use a hard plastic front with metal sensor pads. Further, the soft material is quite comfortable and one doesn't really feel it when running.



Additionally, as the electronic pod that measures the signal is an independent component, athletes can also buy some Adidas shirts that have the sensor pads built right into them. The sensor unit simply snaps onto the front of these shirts, allowing them to leave the strap at home. They can be a bit difficult to find in Canada, however I was able to find them in the US relatively easily. The little sensor pod in the middle of one's chest does look a little funny, however if it is simply used as a base layer with something else on top that isn't an issue.

As with other heart rate monitoring systems, the sensor pads do have to be wet in order to get a good signal. As such, users simply have to moisten them before they head out for their run. Once one gets going the pads will generally stay wet as the wearer begins to sweat. The only caveat with this is that prior to races they can dry out before one starts, but it is relatively easy to take it off and give it a little squirt of water before beginning. Worst case scenario, it only takes about two to three minutes of running to get dry pads moistened so it doesn't really cause a lot of problems.

R-R Data Recording

In addition to the standard averaged heart rate data that similar products provide, Polar's unit also transmits the time between individual beats of the heart. On the wrist unit, this data is used to provide an optional 'R-R Variability' readout that gives users a rough idea of how stable their heart beat is. At heart rates below the aerobic zone the heart rate varies significantly, but as the rate increases it becomes more periodic in nature. As such, this data is apparently used internally by the watch to determine when runners reach certain training zones, as well as to provide a score ('Running Index') for the quality of the overall run. I haven't found this terribly useful while in the field, as you really have to monitor it pretty closely to see how it is changing, but it is not a default reading so it's easy enough to leave switched off.

After the fact, however, the R-R data can be quite useful when analyzing a run. Primarily, it makes it much easier to see exactly when the monitor was having trouble getting a good signal from your heart. The watch/software seems to have a pretty good mechanism of working the noise out of the averaged heart rate curve, so it can look relatively clean even when the signal is weak. The R-R curve, however, makes it relatively plain to see when there was even the slightest problem, as the curve tends to be pretty noisy if the strap slips out of position. As such, it gives wearers a very good way to determine the reliability of the data shown. Further, this information is invaluable when first using the device as it allows users to get a good idea of how well they've positioned everything.

When the sensor is seated correctly, the R-R data gives users a much higher resolution look at the activity of their heart during a run. The curve records each and every beat of the wearer's heart during the session and plots it out in the included software. As such, if a user was running at 180bpm, they will have three readings for every one in the standard curve. This is naturally not necessary for everything, however it can be very useful for tasks such as analyzing exactly how well one recovers after a hard lap during an interval session.

Polar RS800 Wrist Unit



The centerpiece of the system is the wrist unit itself, as it is the component that users will be interacting with most directly. It is responsible for coordinating the other sensors, recording the data and displaying the real-time readings. In addition to these tasks, the watch also contains a barometric altimeter that records any changes in elevation. Naturally, the watch face and five buttons provide access to the multitude of options and settings offered by the watch.

The various sensors can be switched on and off via menus in the watch itself, and countless settings allow you to specify exactly how it handles the data that it receives. With all options enabled, it has enough memory to store about four hours of telemetry. By bumping the recording rate down to 5 second intervals (from 1 second), this capacity is increased to 11 hours. By disabling R-R and altitude recording, you can bring it to over 30 hours. In its most bare bones mode it can store almost 1900 hours of data, but that provides no speed/pace data and a recording rate of one minute so its utility is limited.

As it doesn't need a GPS radio or antenna, the RS800 watch is much smaller than many of the other products aimed at this market. With that said, it is still a pretty big unit when compared to normal watches. Regardless, it is small enough that it's comfortable to wear and it doesn't really get in the way when running. It is powered by a small CR2032 button cell battery, which is user replaceable via a small cover on the back of the watch. While it is not rechargeable, this battery lasts for about a year and costs less than $4CDN, so that isn't a big issue.

The watch is controlled by five buttons, a large red one on the bottom face of the watch and four small buttons around the edges. The top right button switches the backlight on, and when held down during exercise provides some basic options. The bottom right button pauses the exercise session, and a second press stops it. The buttons on the right side navigate up and down through menus, and during exercise they select which data to show (you can scroll through six different screens with three pieces of (user configurable) information on each). Finally, the red lap button initiates workouts, marks laps during exercise and acts as a general 'ok' button in many of the watch's internal menus.



On the rear face of the watch unit is a small opening for the barometric altimeter used by the RS800sd to measure elevation changes. This method is significantly more precise than GPS-based elevation measurements, and can accurately detect changes of a few inches. The downside, however, is that changes in atmospheric pressure (eg a storm system passing through) during a session will incorrectly manifest themselves as changes in elevation. Naturally, as these changes generally occur pretty slowly (relative to changes in elevation) they are relatively easy to correct for after the fact but one still has to keep them in mind. The other caveat is that the watch doesn't appear to record elevation on a per-second basis like the other values (subjectively looks like 3 sec intervals), so short rises/falls might not be recorded completely (ie a runner may crest the hill between two readings).

Finally, the top of the watch face has an IrDA transceiver that allows it to communicate with a computer using the included ProTrainer 5 software. This allows the user to upload the detailed telemetry from their run into the computer, where it is stored (and can be analyzed) in a detailed training log. Further, all of the settings provided in the watch can be configured from the software as well - making it easier to make detailed adjustments. It should be mentioned, however, that the RS800sd does not come with an IrDA adapter for the computer, so most people will have to buy this separately. Polar does sell an adapter for $70, however as the watch uses the standard IrDA protocol you can buy the necessary adapter (minus the Polar logo) for less than $10 at any electronics store.


Polar ProTrainer 5 Software



The main benefit to using a Running Computer like the RS800sd is the ability to analyze the details of one's exercise regime. This includes looking over the telemetry from an individual run as well as looking over aggregate training logs to see exactly how well one is progressing. The watch and sensors perform the function of providing immediate feedback and data recording, however the last piece of the puzzle is the software that takes all of this raw data and allows runners to examine it in a meaningful way. In the case of the RS800sd, this duty is performed by the ProTrainer 5 software package that is included in the box.

Walkthrough

When ProTrainer 5 is first launched, the user is presented with a calendar view (shown above) that provides a high-level view of the overall training program. All of the exercises that are uploaded from the watch will be displayed in the calendar, and the user can manually add any sessions where the RS800sd wasn't used (eg swimming). Double clicking on any day in the calendar will present another dialog that allows the user to drill down for more detail, however I'll get back to that a little later.


Each individual exercise entry includes a user defined name, followed by a line containing the sport (R=Running, C=Cycling, W=Walking, etc.), the amount of time taken to complete the session (if available) and the total distance covered. This is naturally very basic information, however it is sufficient to give a rough overview of what was done on any given day. I should note that older versions of the software (which was used to download the two days shown above) placed R-R data (beat to beat heart rate curves) as a discrete exercise (not counting towards totals), however a recent update now bundles that along with the main exercise.

At the right edge of the screen are a set of panels that summarize the overall activity for each training week (see above). This lists the number of exercises, the total time and distance that was recorded during the week and the number of Calories burned. Further, the graphic at the bottom of the panel charts the amount of time spent in each of the five training zones. These zones are user configurable, but by default they are set to 10% increments of the user's maximum heart rate (ie red=90-100%, yellow=80-90%, etc.). This provides a good deal of information about overall training volume and intensity for each week, and allows the athlete to see how well they've been doing at a glance.


As noted above, to get further information the user simply double clicks on a day in the calendar view which results in the above dialog. The first tab provides the ability to keep track of basic information about the day itself. The user can enter a short note, log the weather/temperature, as well as a few basic physiological parameters. If this isn't manually filled out, the data from the previous day will simply be moved forward so it doesn't need to be modified unless something changes.


The exercises performed on the selected day appear as tabs along the top of the dialog, and clicking on them will bring up the above dialog. The left panel contains basic stats about the workout, all of which can be modified by the user if desired (and are relatively self-explanatory). The top-right panel contains the exact time spent in each of the training zones (mentioned above) during the selected session, as well as the total time of the workout.

For exercises uploaded from the watch, the panel in the bottom right corner is generally the most important. A small thumbnail provides a simple view of the data, with a set of buttons underneath allowing the user to pull up more detailed information. Double clicking on the thumbnail brings up a detailed plot of the exercise session.


The detailed plot (shown above) allows the user to examine the telemetry from the session directly. When all of the options are enabled, the chart will contain plots for stride length (green line), heart rate (thin red line with white fill), elevation (thick red line with red fill) cadence (green line) and pace (blue line). The background is colour-coded with the heart rate zones that were configured for the selected sport.

Laps are marked along the bottom axis of the plot, and hovering a mouse over any of them will bring up a summary of critical stats (time, lap time, distance, average pace, heart rate at the end of the lap, average heart rate, average speed, average altitude, total ascent, grade, vertical ascent rate and cadence average). Manual laps (triggered by pressing the red button during exercise), automatic laps (generally used to mark km/mi splits) and phase markers (used for programmed interval workouts) are designated and numbered separately so they are easy to keep track of. Right clicking on the plot and selecting 'Lap Times/Markers' allows you to get more detail, as well as add/remove/modify laps as desired.

Just to the bottom left of the plot is a set of instantaneous data readings (time, heart rate, Calorie rate, pace, distance, cadence, altitude, ascent and descent) corresponding to the selected point in time. When first opened, this will reflect the starting point of the session but clicking anywhere on the plot itself will move the cursor to provide you with data from that point in time. Pressing the left and right arrows on the computer will move forward/back in one second intervals (or whatever sampling rate was selected) so the user can step through the session.

To the bottom right of the plot is a grade summary for the session, outlining how much of the session was spent on flat ground, ascending inclines and descending. Both time and distance figures are provided for all three, in both absolute and percentage terms. Naturally, the detailed elevation plot is generally more useful but this information can be handy for route comparison purposes.

Finally, the very bottom of the plot includes a summary of the overall workout. This section provides exercise duration, distance, heart rate (avg/max), pace (avg/max), cadence (avg/max), running index and ascent. The running index field specifies a synthetic score corresponding to the overall quality of the session. Polar isn't explicit about exactly how this is calculated, however it seems to correlate tightly to the ratio of speed and heart rate. I'm not entirely sure how accurate it is, however, as the score of 61 that I usually get is supposed to correspond to a 1:30 half marathon which is about twelve minutes faster than my recent race.

Customization

Polar ProTrainer also offers the option to customize many areas of the wrist units operation, as well as to create and upload custom exercises. When the user goes to the Tools->Edit Polar Product Settings menu, a tabbed dialog (shown below) is provided that offers a plethora of options.

The first tab (General) provides an overview of the wrist units current state. It includes a summary of the amount of available memory (as well as buttons to manage entries), a readout of the level of charge remaining in each of the three batteries (watch, HRM and footpod) as well as overall totals. The second tab allows basic watch functions to be configured (time and date, adding alarms, etc.) and is relatively simple so I won't cover it here.

The User tab allows athletes to enter basic information about themselves, that will be utilized by a number of algorithms within the wrist unit and the software to calculate values such as calories burned and the running index. All of these values can be updated on the wrist unit as well, however they are much easier to enter in bulk with a proper keyboard and mouse.

The Product tab controls a number of aspects about how data is recorded and displayed by the wrist unit. The Sports Zones button allows the user to customize the heart rate zones that are used for both the reports and for certain real-time displays that the wrist unit can present to the runner during a session. Finally, the 'Customize Exercise Displays' button launches another dialog that allows the user to control which data is displayed when the footpod is disabled (for some reason a different button on the 'Run' tab controls the displays used when it is available).

The 'Run' tab is likely one of the most significant panels available within this dialog, as it controls a lot of the central functionality offered by the running computer. It allows you to enable/disable the footpod, select whether the wrist unit should display pace (min/km) or speed (km/h), modify the calibration factor and a number of other variables. Most significantly, however, is the 'Customize Exercise Display' button, which allows the athlete to control how data is displayed on the watch during exercise.

Each of the six columns in this dialog represent one of the 'pages' of information that the wrist unit will be displayed. The watch face displays one page at a time, and the buttons on the right edge of the wrist unit allow the user to cycle through the pages as desired. Each of the pages can be disabled if desired, and what is displayed in each of the three available slots can be selected by the user. For reference, the available information is as follows:

• Altitude - A simple readout of the watches current altitude in feet or meters.
  
• Ascent* - The gross distance that the runner has ascended during the current session.
  
• Cadence* - A readout of the number of steps that the runner/walker is making per minute.
  
• Calories* - The total number of calories consumed during the current exercise session.
  
• Countdown Guide* - Displays remaining time or distance in the current exercise phase. When running in a phase without a target (or running a 'free' exercise session), it simply displays total time.
  
• Distance - The total distance covered during the current exercise session.
  
• Exercise Time - The total amount of time accumulated in the current session.
  
• Heart Rate - The current heart rate reading (in beats per minute) that is provided by the Wearlink strap.
  
• Lap Distance* - The total distance accumulated in the current lap.
  
• Lap Time - The total amount of time accumulated in the current lap.
  
• RR Variation* - The average variance (in milliseconds) between individual heart beats.
  
• Speed/Pace - A readout of the instantaneous pace (or speed) of the runner/walker.
  
• Target Zone* - A readout of the current training zone that the wearer is in.
  
• Time of Day* - A simple clock readout to provide the current time of day.
  
• Zone Pointer* - A graphical readout of where the current heart rate falls within the training zones.

* The entries above listed with an asterisk are only available in the top two rows of the display. The lower row offers a smaller number of selections as it uses a fixed element LCD rather than the bitmapped display used by the upper two.

This provides a good deal of flexibility so that the user can select exactly what information they want available and how to organize it. The above fields cover pretty much anything that runners will likely want access to, and the availability of six selectable screens allows that information to be retrieved without much difficulty. The default configuration works relatively well, however no layout is perfect for everyone so the ability to customize it to this level is quite helpful.

The next major tab allows the user to prepare preprogrammed exercise sessions which the wrist unit will guide them through. The RS800sd can store up to ten exercises at any given time, and if more are necessary the software allows users to save them to disk and call them back when necessary. When an open slot is available, the three buttons across the top of the dialog allow the user to create new sessions - either by a simple zoned exercise (with a single set of targets for the entire session) or a complex phased exercise (with a number of phases, each with their own individual targets).

When the user creates a phased exercise, the above dialog is used to build and prepare each of the phases. In this case, an 8 mile run with ten 100m strides is planned with heart rate targets programmed into each phase. The panel at the bottom of the dialog allows the phases to be prepared and re-ordered, with the following dialog provided to allow customization of each individually:

Using this dialog, the athlete can name the phase, specify how it is initiated (automatically when the previous phase ends or manually by pressing the red button), the duration of the phase (manual, time, distance or when a specific heart rate is reached) and what sort of targets the user would like to aim for (none, preprogrammed training zones, manually specified heart rate range or a pace range). Further, the bottom panel allows the user to specify that one or more phases is repeated a number of times which is helpful for interval training sessions.

Once the phases have been built up, the diagram near the top of the exercise dialog illustrates the overall workout as well as the specified targets. The top right of the dialog provides an estimate of how long the run will take, as well as how much distance will be covered. Once complete, the exercise can be given a name and short description, then uploaded to the watch.

The next time an exercise session is started, the user can then select this exercise and the wrist unit will walk them through the session. When the specified phase is complete, the watch will beep to signal the user to change to the next phase (the name of which is shown on screen momentarily). If targets have been set for the current phase, the wrist unit will also sound an alarm whenever the runner falls outside of the specified range (this can be turned off during the session if desired). After the run is complete, the watch will provide a summary of a number of critical details (time spent, distance covered, average pace, heart rate, cadence, etc.) broken down by phase. Naturally, phase changes are also marked on exercise plots when examining them in ProTrainer.

That covers the main functionality of the ProTrainer 5 software. The package does offer additional features like entering an exercise plan and generating detailed reports of your progress, however this article is already getting pretty long so I'll stick to the basics outlined above. Regardless, the functionality discussed above covers most of the core features that most people will use in a good deal of detail.

Variants
G3 GPS Sensor

In addition to the S3 footpod, the RS800 can also be used with a GPS device called the G3 that provides distance and speed data. This model is generally purchased as part of the RS800G3 bundle, however RS800sd users can also purchase the sensor separately and use it instead of the S3 footpod that came with their watch. Note, however, that the RS800, RS800sd and RS800G3 can only use one of these sensors at any given time so the user must select which mechanism they would like to use (although this is a simple menu item, so it can be done on a session-by-session basis). It is also important to note that these models do not store a tracklog of the route like other GPS-based products, instead simply storing the calculated distance and speed data.

RS800CX

Recently, Polar has released a new revision of this training computer offering a few additional features. The core design and operation of the new model is basically identical to the RS800sd, so most of the above is relevant to this model as well. The major differences are as follows:

• Compatibility with Polar W.I.N.D. speed and cadence sensors for bicycles allows the RS800CX to work for both running and cycling workouts.
• When used with the G3 GPS sensor, can now record a map of the route taken during the session.
  
• Ability to connect to both the S3 footpod and G3 GPS radio at the same time. This provides the route recording capability of GPS and combines it with the accuracy of the footpod mechanism.
• Automatically falls back to alternative tracking if the connection to the primary sensor is lost (eg if the footpod battery dies, GPS will take over).
• Ability to monitor up to four pairs of shoes (vs. two in the RS800sd).
  
• Allows the ability to append new session onto an existing session when the later is started shortly after finishing the former.
• A number of other small refinements to the overall design of the system.

As such, the primary advantages of the RS800CX over the RS800sd is for multi-sport athletes who need the addition of the cycling functionality. As I'm currently both a runner and cyclist, the RS800CX would have been a better match had it been an option when I was buying it. For someone who simply runs, there isn't really a lot of material difference between the models (although if buying new you might as well buy the CX).

One thing that should be mentioned is that some Polar distributors appear to be offering the option of upgrading the RS800sd to the RS800CX. There is unfortunately no company-wide policy on this front, however in countries where the service is being offered existing customers can send in their RS800sd and pay to have the electronics replaced to make it the functional equivalent of the new RS800CX. I haven't really looked into what the situation is in Canada as of yet, however I likely will give them a call at some point to examine the possibility.

Technical Details:

As the RS800sd uses wireless transmitters in each of its components, Polar is required to file documents with regulatory bodies in countries where it is sold. In many countries, these filings become part of the public record and thus can be pulled up by those interested - providing internal photos and details of the devices that aren't available from other sources. The American Federal Communications Commission does just this, and fortunately their filings can be pulled up via a simple web search. As such, for those technically inclined readers interested in such detail the appropriate filings for the components are as follows:

RS800 Wrist Unit: INWK1
WINDLink HRM: INWK2
S3 Footpod: INWJ9
G3 GPS Pod: INWM5

Interestingly, when pulling up the above URLs I also found this entry (INWR7) detailing a bluetooth-based HRM module similar to the WINDLink (named Windlink+ in the filings). Currently Polar uses a proprietary 2.4GHz protocol for communication between their sensors, but moving to an open standard like this would make it easier for third-party products to add compatibility for these products (much like the open ANT+ protocol used by Garmin).

Weaknesses

While the RS800sd is an extremely powerful tool, like anything in the market it does have a few rough edges. These aren't really huge issues, and many of them likely fall into the nitpick category, but for completeness sake a quick summary is as follows:

• The RS800sd uses an integral wrist strap instead of a standard strap coupling, which means that when it wears out you have to send it back to Polar for repair. Further, the lack of a user-replaceable strap means that one has no option to go with an alternative design.
  
• The beep signal sounded by the wrist unit when an auto-lap occurs is the same as the phase change signal, potentially making it difficult to differentiate them. When an automatic lap is triggered during a phased exercise, it is easy to get confused and interpret it as signalling the end of a phase. Ideally, it would be nice to have a number of different signals that could be selected for different types of phases.
• Given the rapid decline in flash memory prices, it would be a significant benefit to have more than four hours of capacity with all features active. While this is generally enough for any individual running session, more memory would mean that it wouldn't have to be synchronized with the computer as often (especially significant when travelling). It was understandable when the RS800sd was released years ago, but it would have been a nice step to add more memory to the updated RS800CX that was released late last year.

Things that Could be Improved

Aside from the direct issues listed above, there are a few refinements that would make the RS800 a better product. These items aren't really faults with the design itself, but instead little things that could be done a little better:

• When configuring phased exercises, it would be beneficial to be able to specify a total distance value in the duration field of each phase. On many occasions it would be beneficial to have variable length phases (eg the recovery portions of an interval workout) but still maintain a fixed distance for the entire run. At this point, users can only specify a distance or length of time for each phase in isolation so getting a fixed total distance means that all phases need to be distance-based.
• Switching the IrDA connection to a radio frequency based option (possibly Bluetooth-based given the above filing) would make for a more elegant solution. While IrDA ports may have been common when the RS800sd was released, it has largely been supplanted by RF technologies. Aside from more people having the requisite hardware already, using RF would remove the annoyance of having to maintain a line-of-sight connection when uploading.
  
• As noted above, changes in barometric pressure can manifest themselves incorrectly as changes of altitude. Incorporating a second barometer and a simple data logger into the infrared interface (which stays at your desk) would allow the software to completely eliminate this error. Given the extremely high precision of the built-in altimeter, this would yield a nearly perfect elevation record.
• Adding a mechanism to allow calibration factor to be changed on-the-fly when it is apparent that it is off. Currently, the calibration procedure requires you to initiate it before running the known distance. In some cases, however, it's easy to change shoes and forget to update the calibration. When this happens, it would be nice to simply select a menu item at a known point and change the calibration on the spot.
• Furthering the above, when using both the S3 and G3 it would be nice to offer an automatic calibration option that will detect any error. While manually calibrating the footpod would be more accurate, a system like this would provide most of the benefits of an inertial system without the user having to worry about maintaining calibration.
  
• Adding electronics in the footpod to detect the activation signal from ChampionChip timing pads and drop a lap marker would be extremely helpful when racing. Every finishing photo that I have shows me looking down at my wrist to press the stop button, and adding a simple feature like this would allow me to let the device do all the work. While it would add some cost to the product, the system would only have to detect the signal rather than interpret it.
• If at all possible, it would be nice to use the same type of battery in all three of the sensors that work within this system. Right now, each of the sensors uses a slightly different button cell battery so it's a bit of a pain to pick up replacements. This isn't really a very big thing, but it's just a matter of a more elegant configuration.
  

Conclusion

The Polar RS800sd is an extremely powerful tool, and with the associated software it can provide Runners with a lot of critical information to improve their workout regime. It records more data than any other running computer on the market, and does so using some of the most advanced technology available. The footpod-based system does require a certain degree of attention on the part of the user to keep it accurate, but for those willing to expend the effort it yields the most accurate results currently available.

Week 7: Review

Another excellent week weather-wise, making it an extremely pleasant for running. Tuesday and Wednesday saw a lot of rain, and Thursday was pretty windy but I was fortunate enough that my runs happened to fall into times where the weather died down a bit. By Friday, the mixture of rain on the previous days, the sun and the warmth we've been getting had melted most of the accumulated snow and the pavement was bone dry for the first time in a while.


As I had some stuff to do on Thursday, I ended up deferring my 8 miler to Friday so this worked out quite well. After about 6km of running on dry pavement and nearly perfect weather, I figured that I'd give a local trail a shot to make the most of it. During the summer this path is a great running route as it has a good set of lightly rolling hills, decent scenery and the soft gravel surface is a lot easier on the legs. During the Winter, however, it can be a bit hit and miss as it isn't plowed or salted (it passes through a conservation area) so the snow and ice quickly builds up.

Unfortunately, while the roads had been cleared by the conditions on the previous few days the trail was still pretty well covered. The first kilometer or so was pretty good, but after that point there was a good deal of thick snow as well as some icy patches in the low-lying areas that forced me to slow down significantly. As the only other way to get out was to head back the way I came, I decided to continue on. While it was a bit of a fight to get through it, with a little effort it wasn't too much of an issue. Naturally, my pace wasn't spectacular in this segment (averaging about 6min/km) but there wasn't much I could have done about that.

About 2.5km into the trail, however, I came up on a descent and when I looked down I realized that the river had spilled its banks from all of the run-off. As such, the next segment of trail was flooded by about two feet of water and going forward wasn't an option. Given the terrain behind me, however, it would have been a pain to double back. As such, I just figured out the bearing that I had to head to get back to the road and took off through the forest. The terrain between the trees was much better than the trail, as the snow hadn't been compacted by hikers and there was a lot less ice to deal with. Naturally, navigating between the trees, rocks and exposed roots was a little challenging at first, but once I got the hang of it I was able to maintain a pretty stable ~5:00min/km pace.

Once I got out of the forest and back to the sidewalk things naturally picked up, and I finished the scheduled distance with little trouble. Either way, it certainly wasn't ideal but it was nice to inject something a little different than the usual routine into the mix. I'll likely wait until the summer to try the trail out again, however, as proper training requires consistency and trail running doesn't really lend itself to that ;)

Other than that, things largely went as planned this week. I did have to move things around a bit for scheduling issues (aside from Thursday, I also swapped the Sunday and Saturday runs around). Given the discomfort in the leg last week, I held off on the walks again as their training value is limited so I'm more prone to give them up. Things were largely healed up but got a little aggravated again by the uneven terrain on Friday, but the discomfort is pretty much gone today.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 61.3km (38.1mi)
Walking: 1.2km (0.75mi)
Cycling: 80km (49.7mi)
Total: 142.5km (88.5mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 456.8km (283.8mi)
Walking: 120.9km (75.1mi)
Cycling: 565.0km (351.1mi)
Total: 1142.7km (710.0mi)

With the recovery week in the books, I'm now on to the second mesocycle of this training program which is intended to build my Lactate Threshold. As such, I'm scheduled for a total of 50 miles (80.5km) this week and will hit 54 miles (87km) the week afterwards. I'm also looking at my first 18 miler (~29km) on Sunday, which should be an interesting experience.

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 10mi (16.1K) w/5mi (8K) @ 15K pace
Wed 30K Cycle + 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Thurs 11mi (17.7K) Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 7mi (11.3K) w/8x100m
Sun 18mi (29.0K) LSD

Aside from that, one thing I will have to do is start playing around with nutritional intake during my runs. I flirted with it a bit during half-marathon training, but as it didn't really provide much benefit there I didn't really push very hard. As I approach the 20mi mark, however, it is likely to become significant so I will have to take in some calories during my runs. Given the plethora of options on that front, I'm going to have to do some experimentation to figure out what works well for me.

Week 6: Review

The last three days have been pretty much textbook perfect running weather, and have done wonders in decimating the massive snow piles that have accumulated over the last month or so. There was a bit of cold and snow in the early week, but once we got through that it got up to a high of 8C on Saturday which is quite the reprieve from what we've been dealing with lately ;)

Unfortunately, after the 15 miler last Sunday I began to have a bit of discomfort in my upper right leg. It was likely caused by the fact that I've been spending a lot of time lately running on the roads rather than the sidewalks. As I tend to religiously stick to the left side of the road for safety purposes (going against vehicular traffic), the camber of the road creates an imbalance in my stride (as my right foot is repeatedly hitting ground higher than my left, it hits the ground with much greater force than usual). While this isn't a big deal in and of itself, when the body is continually pounded like this for an extended period it can cause problems. This was likely exacerbated by running long stretches on the larger roads, as the camber at the edge of a four lane road is generally much more aggressive than that of a two-lane residential street.

In the interests of letting it heal, I skipped the cycling session on Monday. By Tuesday it was improved, but there was still a bit of tightness there. It wasn't really bad enough to throw off my running schedule, so I went out for the Tuesday run anyway. Fortunately, it didn't really cause much issue with my running and actually improved a bit over the duration of the session. It was still a bit uncomfortable to walk on it, however, so I skipped my walk that afternoon to let it get better.

On Wednesday, I elected to give the scheduled 30K ride a shot to see how it would work. As cycling doesn't have the impact of running or walking, this worked quite well and any discomfort completely disappeared while I was riding. It even stayed away for a few hours after the ride, although it did start to come back afterwards. I did my 5mi recovery run at the Running Room as usual, and like the day before it wasn't really an issue.

As the previous runs went well, I did my 10 miler on Thursday but skipped the scheduled walk in case that would help. On Friday, I did my ride as usual (although I scaled it back to 40km due to scheduling issues) with the same results as I had on Wednesday. At this point, it was significantly improved but again wasn't completely gone so I elected to skip the 5 miler on Saturday morning. This does mean that I lost a bit of running mileage, but I figured with the long run scheduled the next day it was worth it to ensure that I'd be able to make the most of it. It was certainly a shame as the weather yesterday was incredible for this time of year, but it's better to be safe than sorry on this front.


Which brings us to this morning, where I set out for my first run with a chunk at marathon pace. The schedule called for 16 miles with 10 of them done at marathon pace. I'm still not 100% sure what that should be, as my fitness has improved significantly since September so my previous race times don't really mean a lot at this point. As such, I looked over my data for the last little while and settled on giving a 4:45/km pace a shot (which works out to a little over 3h20m for a marathon distance).

Given the issue with the leg, I carefully plotted a course that would allow me to stick with the sidewalks for the majority of the run. Thankfully, the heat over the last few days had melted a significant amount of the snow so the problems that I ran into last week wouldn't really be an issue this time around. What I didn't properly anticipate, however, is that as the temperatures had dropped below freezing overnight there were a good number of icy patches that I had to deal with. As the snow banks didn't completely melt, in many places they formed a dam on either side of the sidewalk trapping the water and allowing it to refreeze.

Fortunately, the clear portions were pretty much bone dry so these ice patches were easy to see, however I had to slow down significantly when passing over them. In some areas (especially on hills, where the water ran down the sidewalk) these patches were quite large, so they had a significant negative effect on my ability to maintain my desired pace. For a normal long run this wouldn't be a big issue, but when trying to maintain race pace it made it difficult to keep my heart rate up where it needed to be.

Despite these issues, however, the run went quite well. I averaged an overall pace of 5:05/km, with the 10mi segment at 4:52/km. Running the raw numbers through a spreadsheet however, my median pace worked out to a perfect 4:45/km so when the obstructions are factored out I stayed pretty close to where I needed to be. Unfortunately, my heart rate was much lower than it should have been during this segment and it's hard to tell if that was the fault of (a) the periodic slowdowns or (b) if the pace was a little slower than it should have been. Either way, I'll have to do some more experimenting with different speeds to figure out where I need to be.


As I missed the 5 mile recovery run on Saturday, my mileage is a little short this week (40mi vs. 45mi). Naturally, the two walks and cycling session that I skipped also mean that those numbers will be a little lower than usual. Either way, the leg is feeling a lot better today and as next week is a recovery week hopefully it will get back to 100% soon.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 64.8km (40.3mi)
Walking: 2.3km (1.4mi)
Cycling: 70km (43.5mi)
Total: 137.1km (85.2mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 395.5km (245.8mi)
Walking: 119.7km (74.4mi)
Cycling: 485.0km (301.4mi)
Total: 1000.2km (621.5mi)

As noted above, the upcoming week is a recovery week so mileage will drop down a bit (to 37mi) before jumping up to 50 miles the week afterwards. Other than the bump in the road this week, the training program has been going quite well so far and as long as I'm a little more careful things will hopefully continue along that path ;)

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8mi (12.9K) w/10x100m
Wed 30K Cycle + 5mi (8K) Recovery
Thurs 8mi (12.9K) Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Sun 12mi (19.3K) LSD

In other news, I'm now officially registered for the Mississauga marathon so I'm committed to seeing this program to the end one way or the other. There is still a lot of training to be done which is only going to get harder and harder, so I figure that locking myself in will help to keep me motivated ;)

Week 5: Review

The weather this week was pretty brutal, with heavy snowstorms on Wednesday and Thursday that made running quite difficult. On Wednesday, we ended up cutting the 5mi recovery run a bit short (5.7km/3.5mi) as the 6' of slush we were pushing through made it somewhat pointless to keep going. Accumulation was fortunately not as bad on Thursday, however it was snowing heavily while I was doing my 10 miler which made the session somewhat unpleasant.

Fortunately, this weekend has been much better. Yesterday was a little cold, but other than that the roads were mostly clear and the snow didn't come until the late afternoon so it was a non-factor. As such, I increased my distance from the planned 4 miler to a 10km in order to make up for the lost mileage on Wednesday. The mixture of the nicer weather combined with the clear roads made this a much more pleasant run than I've had for a while.

Further, the weather today was as close to perfect as it gets around here. A nice warm 6C, little to no wind and sunny skies let me keep most of my winter gear at home and run in much more comfortable clothing than normal for this time of year. After running for a couple of months now wrapped up in winter clothing, it was certainly refreshing to be free of the toque, mittens and neck warmer ;)

Unfortunately, while the roads were in near perfect conditions many of the sidewalks weren't. While this isn't an issue on my shorter runs, as I can generally just switch to the road when necessary, with the longer runs I need to use some 80km/h arterial roadways that make it dangerous to leave the sidewalks. As such, portions of this run were much harder than usual (ie the choppy portions of the cadence/pace plots below), and in some parts I had no choice but to go out on the road if I wanted to keep running. Either way, once I got around the obstacles it worked out to be quite a nice day for a run, and plodding through the snow makes for good strength training ;)

With respect to my other sports, I managed to get most of my walking in this week, as well as all but one cycling session. Hopefully things will slow down a bit next week, and I'll be able to pick up the slack on this part of my training ;)

One other upside this week is that my copy of Pfitzinger/Douglas' Advanced Marathoning 2nd edition finally showed up. For the last few weeks I've been using a copy of the first edition borrowed from the library, so there will be some minor changes in my schedule as the new book makes a few tweaks in the plan. The books are mostly the same, with a few minor differences (eg expanded supplementary training section, small tweaks to the schedules and the addition of an 85 mile/week program) but I figured with the update coming out it made more sense to get a copy of the new one.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 68.8km (43mi)
Walking: 32km (20mi)
Cycling: 80km (50mi)
Total: 181.8km (113mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 330.7km (205.5mi)
Walking: 117.4km (72.9mi)
Cycling: 415.0km (257.9mi)
Total: 863.1km (536.3mi)

For the upcoming week, I'll be adding my first long run with a section at race pace. That is likely going to be a good challenge to see how well I've progressed over the last few weeks, although there will likely be some learning involved. The one thing I will have to do, however, is find a better route for that run as plowing through snow will be a much larger problem when higher speeds are necessary.

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 9mi (14.5K) w/5mi (8km) at LT
Wed 30K Cycle + 5mi (8K) Recovery
Thurs 10mi (16.1K) Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 5mi (8K) Recovery
Sun 16mi (25.8K) LSD w/10mi (16.1km) at Marathon Pace

As the prices for the races that I'm looking at go up this month, I'm in the process of registering for them now. I registered for Around the Bay a few weeks back, and added the Achilles 5K last night. I'll probably be officially registering for the Mississauga Marathon in the next couple days as well, as it's price goes up and having that one locked in will likely help to motivate my training that much more. I'm still flirting with a few other options, as well as trying to work out what I want to do after this training cycle.

Week 4: Review

It was another pretty hostile week weather-wise, although not nearly as bad as last week. While there was some cold to deal with, there wasn't too much snow so it was just a matter of wearing the appropriate clothes and fighting through it. Further, as the temperature rose above freezing this week it helped to melt away a lot of the snow we've accumulated over the last few weeks. As such, I was able to execute all of my running sessions this week at the correct pace. This was especially important on Tuesday, as four of the days eight miles were at a tempo pace that would have been difficult to maintain on snow-covered paths.

In addition, today's 14 miler went quite well (completed in 1:51:38) as the weather cooperated for a change. Temperatures were relatively comfortable in the -11C range, there was little to no wind and the roads and sidewalks were mostly clear. To add the extra mile, I worked in another decent sized hill (about 600m/5% up and ~300m/-9% down) along with a few other minor modifications to fill in the difference. As this was new ground, I was very careful to control my speed; managing a 4:57/km pace and an average heart rate of 151bpm (65% HRR). Mixed with the favourable weather, this translated into a relatively comfortable run.



As for cycling and walking, scheduling was again a little complicated this week so I failed in get all of the scheduled sessions in. With that said, I did push a little harder on my cycling sessions this week to try and make up for the lost mileage. I will naturally have to focus on getting them all in this week, but we'll have to see how reality lines up on that front ;)

Weekly Totals:
Running: 64.3km (40mi)
Walking: 15.4km (10mi)
Cycling: 60km (37mi)
Total: 140km (87mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 261.9km (162.8mi)
Walking: 85.4km (53.5mi)
Cycling: 335.0km (207.9mi)
Total: 682.6km (424.2mi)

This upcoming week is a modest increase, with an extra mile on Wednesday and again on Sunday. While I was a bit concerned about how well I'd deal with the mileage increase, things went quite well this week so the 15 miler next week shouldn't be too challenging. The one thing I will have to start worrying about is the nutrition aspect, as my mileage is beginning to get to the point where it will be necessary to take in fuel during the race.

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8mi (12.9K) w/10x100m
Wed 30K Cycle + 5mi (8K) Recovery
Thurs 10mi (16.1K) Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Sun 15mi (24.2K) LSD

Heart Rate Training

I was asked by one of the instructors at my local Running Room shop to give a talk on heart rate training, and I delivered it on Tuesday. I began using a heart rate monitor about 16 months ago when I was still in my power walking regime, so I've made heavy use of this technology for the duration of my running career. Being a technically minded individual, I've dug up all of the information that I can on this topic and figured that this would be a good opportunity to share what I've learned. As I did the work to compile this information, I figured that I'd upload a copy of my notes and the handout to this blog in case someone else might find the information handy.

Running is naturally an aerobic sport, and performance is primarily governed by your body’s ability to move oxygen from the air and get it to your muscles. Heart rate monitors are tools designed to allow you to objectively monitor the performance of the systems responsible for this task. This, in turn, allows you to make sure you are getting the most out of your training.

There are three basic variables that control the quantity of oxygen that your cardiovascular system can transport. Firstly, the composition of your blood determines how much oxygen it can carry in a given volume. Secondly, your stroke volume determines the amount of blood that your heart moves in each beat. Finally, your heart rate determines the number of beats per minute.

The first two parameters are basically fixed in nature. With sustained training, they will improve, but that process occurs over the period of weeks and months. As such, your heart rate is the only mechanism that your body has to adapt to short-term demands. By monitoring this value, like watching the tachometer in your car, you can objectively determine your training intensity at any given time.

Unlike a car, however, the human body can adjust itself to deal with changing demands. When your systems are repeatedly put under stress, they will make adaptations to better deal with those stressors in the future. Training programs, such as the one that you are following now, stress your body in a controlled manner in order to trigger a specific set of adaptations suited to the target race.

The catch, however, is that the adaptations that the body makes are very specific to the stresses that are applied. Each of the different types of runs in your schedule has different objectives, so it is critical that they are done at the correct intensity. If they are done too hard or too easily, they will trigger different adaptations than intended and leave you improperly prepared when it comes to race day.

The tricky part of this is that it is often difficult to figure out exactly what the correct intensity is. Trying to tie it down to a specific pace is problematic as the mapping between intensity and pace is dependent on a number of variables. Further complicating this, as your fitness improves you will be able to run at faster paces at a given intensity.

Naturally, this is exactly the reason why heart rate monitors were created. By targeting specific heart rates during your runs, you will be able to precisely target the correct intensity and trigger the intended adaptations. As you get stronger, your heart rate for a given pace will become lower, allowing you to see when you need to step things up a bit to keep the stressor in place.

To simplify this process, physiologists have developed a structure composed of five different heart rate zones. Each zone encompasses a range of heart rates, and carries with it specific training characteristics. Nearly all modern HRMs provide tools to determine which zone you are in, as well as to analyze how much time is spent in each. Naturally, depending on what you are trying to achieve, the importance of each zone to your training program will vary.

The lowest zone on this scale, zone 1, is for extremely low intensity work such as a light walk or slow jog. Naturally, it produces little stress on your body, and therefore produces little to no training benefit in and of itself. With that said, it does serve to get the blood flowing and helps to warm up your tissues prior to heavier work. Similarly, at the end of the workout it is also potentially useful for clearing excess lactate from muscle tissues. As such, this zone is primarily used for the warmup and cooldown segments of your workouts.

The next step up the ladder is zone 2, which generally represents the bottom edge of what is considered aerobic exercise. For most people, running in this zone will require a conscious effort to slow yourself down and is basically akin to the long-slow distance runs that you do on Sundays. Due to this, it is often the most under-appreciated zone despite its critical role in improving a runner’s efficiency.

The energy that your body needs is provided from two primary sources – carbohydrates and fats. The former is naturally the ideal fuel; however your body can only store a maximum of about 2500 Calories in this form at any given time. The later, on the other hand, provides energy at a much slower rate; however each pound of fat can provide about 3500 Calories. If you are carrying 30 lbs of fat, for instance, that translates into a store of 105,000 Calories at your disposal. As such, when it comes to long distance running your ability to make use of that energy becomes critical to your success.

Whenever you run, your body burns a mixture of these two fuels. The higher your heart rate, the larger the percentage of carbohydrates you will consume. In zone 2, the majority of your energy is drawn from your fat stores. Because of this, spending time in this zone stresses the metabolic pathways responsible for burning fat. Over time, this will improve the efficiency of these systems and, in turn, allow a larger percentage of your energy to be drawn from your fat stores even at higher intensities.

For endurance sports, this is a critical adaptation as significant depletion of your carbohydrate stores becomes more and more likely as the length of your runs get longer. While complete depletion is unlikely in the half-marathon distance, it takes some time to regenerate those supplies between training sessions so it can negatively affect your ability to train properly. Every Calorie of energy that comes from fat is a Calorie that remains in your carbohydrate reserves, allowing you to recover for the next session faster.

Moving up another level, zone 3 is generally the range where people will naturally run without any conscious effort to control pace. This relates to the steady runs in your training schedule and will generally provide the bulk of the mileage that you rack up on a weekly basis. Running in this zone begins to stress the cardiovascular system, and triggers the body to make a number of changes to improve the transport of oxygen to the muscles. Primarily, it increases the density of capillaries in the muscles responsible for running, making it easier to get oxygenated blood to your muscle fibers. Secondly, it builds the strength of your heart muscles; thereby increasing the amount of blood it can pump with each beat (the stroke volume, mentioned above). This, in turn, means that your heart rate can run at lower levels for a given output level – allowing you to run faster in each of the zones covered here. As such, these adaptations are critical to pretty much every type of running and form an important part of any training plan.

Next up is zone 4, which is likely one of the most important zones for the half marathon distance. Running in this zone will typically require you to push yourself to maintain the pace; however it is slow enough that you can sustain it for significant distances. As such, this is the level that you will typically run races longer than 10K (including the half marathon). With that said runs in this zone take a lot out of you and will require significant recovery time, so there are limits to how much mileage you can accumulate in it.

This zone represents the level at which you begin to reach the limits of your ability to supply sufficient oxygen to your muscles. When this happens, your body must rely on its anaerobic pathways. This produces a byproduct called lactate that will accumulate as long as the oxygen deficit persists. When it builds up to a sufficient concentration, it causes pain and will begin to negatively affect the ability of your muscles to produce power.

Fortunately, your body is capable of clearing this substance from your blood in parallel with its production allowing you to push a little harder than you would otherwise be capable of. As such, there is a point within this zone called the lactate threshold where the rate at which lactate is produced exceeds the capacity of your body to clear it out of your system. When you run at or below this level, you will be able to sustain it for an extended period. If, however, you exceed this threshold, lactate will build up and eventually force you to slow down. The further you go beyond the threshold, the faster that this will become an issue.

As with the other zones, training at this threshold triggers a number of adaptations that will help to improve your ability to run at race pace. Primarily, it stresses the metabolic pathways responsible for processing lactate in your bloodstream. This, in turn, results in improvements in these systems that allow you to clear it faster and more efficiently – pushing the threshold to higher intensity levels. Secondly, repeated exposure to significant concentrations of lactate will trigger your tissues to develop a tolerance to it. This, in turn, will increase the concentrations necessary to cause problems and allow you to run beyond the threshold for a longer period of time.

Your lactate threshold is the primary physiological characteristic that will determine how fast you will be able to run long distance races like the half marathon. As such, training sessions focused on working in this zone, such as your tempo runs, are critical to getting the most out of your goal race. While they don’t represent a huge portion of your weekly mileage, it is important that you focus on running them at the correct intensity.

Finally, we come to zone 5, which represents maximal effort exercise such as speedwork and hill training. At these intensities, you will accumulate blood lactate very quickly so you cannot sustain it for very long. Exercise in this zone will increase the maximum volume of oxygen (VO2Max) that your body can transport, and it helps to trigger a number of adaptations that increase your maximum speed. Working out in this zone is critical for short distance races like the 5K and 10K (as this is the zone you will race them in), however its utility is somewhat limited for endurance distances like the marathon and half marathon so I won’t go into any further details.




With the basics covered, I’ll move along to the equipment itself. Heart rate monitors operate by using a simplified electrocardiogram device that wraps around your chest. Two small sensor pads capture the electrical activity within your heart, and a small microprocessor then processes that data. The resulting information is then relayed to a wrist unit, which provides a real-time readout of this value, allowing you to use this value as feedback to adjust your training.

With all but the most basic units, this data is also recorded in on-board memory and can often be uploaded into a computer for post-run analysis. Further, higher-end models also possess the ability to monitor other parameters such as pace, distance and elevation providing the heart rate plots with critical context. These capabilities are nearly as important as the real-time displays, as it allows you to look back at your runs and evaluate what you did right and what you did wrong. In addition, it allows you to precisely monitor your progress over the long term and determine the effectiveness of your training regime.

Week 3: Review

The weather this week was pretty nasty, with ambient temperatures staying down in the -20C range. While there wasn't a lot of snow until last night, the road salt used around here becomes ineffective below -16C so the roads and sidewalks were in pretty bad condition. Fortunately, the wind wasn't too bad on most of the days so the windchill only got down to about -25C - cold, but not as bad as some of the days in December. With that said, I skipped a few of my scheduled walks on account of the cold as it's more difficult to stay warm at lower intensity levels.

Things did warm up significantly last night, however along with the increased temperatures came a huge load of snow. While the forecasts were only calling for about 10-15cm, we got a little over a foot of snow up here. Mix in drifting and material plowed off of the roads (and onto the sidewalks), and significant portions of my trails had much more. This naturally made my 13 mile long run quite difficult this morning, as pretty much all of my route was pretty slushy and I had to charge through 3' of snow for a 4km stretch (couldn't safely switch to the road due to the 80km/h speed limit in that section).

As such, I forgot about trying to maintain a set pace and simply ran by heart rate. Naturally, this meant that I was going slower than usual. My overall pace was a pretty sluggish 5:46/km, and I only averaged a 6:49/km pace through that 4km section. Either way, my average heart rate was about 155bpm (67.5% HRR) which put me in about the right area for this type of run. Given that I usually average about a 4:50-5:00/km pace at this intensity, however, that gives you an idea of the conditions of the roads ;)


Regardless of the weather, I managed to get in all of my runs including an extra session on Wednesday as I wanted to get in a run with the group. While I had intended to do a 4mi recovery run, the showing wasn't quite as good as usual so we joined another group doing hill repeats (7x400m@7%). Fortunately, the higher intensity didn't seem to hurt and it was likely good preparation for the Around the Bay race anyway ;)

With respect to the cycling sessions, I had to shorten a couple of them (Mon 50->30km, Wed 30->20km) due to time constraints, however it's likely a good thing as it allowed me to ease back into the mileage on that front. I'll have to focus on getting these miles in as much as possible, as with the weather getting more and more hostile the utility of this training will likely become more significant (especially if I have to miss some running sessions).

Weekly Totals:
Running: 65km (40mi)
Walking: 12km (7mi)
Cycling: 100km (62mi)
Total: 177km (110mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 197.6km (122.8mi)
Walking: 70.0km (43.5mi)
Cycling: 275.0km (170.9mi)
Total: 542.6km (337.2mi)

The weather for the upcoming week is likely to be much warmer, however we're likely going to get a good deal more snow. Fortunately, it should be spread out enough that the city can keep things reasonably clean (assuming the forecasts are correct this time). Either way, not much that can be done other than simply deal with what mother nature throws at us ;)

Aside from that, this week is also going to be breaking new ground as it calls for a 14 mile LSD run on Sunday. Up until this week the longest distance that I've run has been a half-marathon (21.1km/13.1mi), so this signals the beginning of escalating my mileage once again. I've made a good deal of progress over the last few months getting myself prepared for sustained high mileage, however it is good to be exploring new territory once again ;)

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8mi (12.9K) w/4mi (6.4K) @ 15K pace
Wed 30K Cycle + 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Thurs 10mi (16.1K) Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Sun 14mi (22.5K) LSD

Week 2: Review

The schedule this week was a little more complicated than expected, which caused me to miss a few of my planned sessions. Naturally, I still managed to perform all of the planned running sessions but my cycling and walking mileage is way down from what was intended. I'll have to focus on getting back into that routine this week, as hopefully things will begin to wind down again soon.

This week also marks the official start to my training for the Mississauga Marathon, using the Pfitzinger-Douglas 18 week/55 mile program. The mileage for the first couple of weeks is a bit lower than I've been doing over the last month or so, meaning that this week was a bit of a step back. With that said, that mileage is spread over fewer runs so most of my individual sessions were longer than I'm used to. Fortunately, everything worked out well this time around so it's just a matter of getting used to the new schedule.

Weather wise, a couple of storms rolled through this week which did make the pathways a bit icy and slowed down some of my runs. Fortunately, I got the speed session in on Tuesday when it wasn't too bad, and the moderation of my pace was likely a good thing as I do have a tendency to do slower sessions a bit faster than I should.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 51.5km (32mi)
Walking: 24km (15mi)
Cycling: 50km (31mi)
Total: 125.5km (78mi)

The weather for the upcoming week looks like it's going to be on the chilly side, but fortunately it doesn't look like there will be too much snow or wind so aside from having to bundle up a little better than usual it shouldn't be too bad. The Pfitzinger schedule calls for about 36 mi this week, although I might throw in an extra recovery session on Wednesday as it's been a while since I've run with the group. As noted above, I'm also going to focus on trying to make sure that I get all of my cycling and walking mileage in this week as I've been slacking off a bit on that lately ;)

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8mi (12.9K) w/10x100m
Wed 30K Cycle (4mi Recovery?)
Thurs 10mi (16.1K) Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 5mi (8K) Recovery
Sun 13mi (20.9K) LSD

Looking ahead, I'm going to have to make a few modifications to the schedule to properly prepare for the Around the Bay race. Primarily, the Pfitzinger program doesn't have any explicit hill repeats, so I'm going to have to work something in to prepare for the hills near the end of this race. I've been working hills into my long runs for a while now, but I'll have to play around with some variations to see what works best on this front. Secondly, I'll likely want to do some tapering prior to the ATB, which may require some small adjustments to the schedule.

21.1K LSD

As noted in my post yesterday, I'm moving to a Monday-Sunday week from this point on so today's run isn't going to fit into the normal weekly reports. As such, I'm making a separate post for this session in order to keep a proper record of it.

The weather today was a bit cold, but there was little to no wind and no precipitation so with the appropriate clothing it was actually quite nice. The only caveat was that large portions of the route still had a good deal of snow on the ground, and there were a few icy patches that I had to work around. As such, my pace was a good deal slower than I normally do these runs, although it's probably closer to the pace that I should be doing them at.

Other than that, not a whole lot to report. Overall results are as follows:
Total Distance: 21.1km
Total Time: 1:46:15
Average Pace: 5:02/km
Average Heart Rate: 153bpm (63% HRR)

Full Telemetry:

Week 1: Review

With the holidays rolling down, I was able to get in most of the sessions that were planned so my mileage is back up. The weather this week was a bit unpredictable, and snowcover did slow down a few of my runs, but overall it wasn't too bad. It is obvious that I'm going to need to get some form of ice cleats to deal with the tempo runs during the winter, however, as it has been getting more and more difficult to maintain speed on nasty winter days.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 60km (37.3mi)
Walking: 34km (21.1mi)
Cycling: 125km (77.7mi)
Total: 219km (136.1mi)

I'll be formally starting my training program this week, so my schedule will drop back a little this week (from 37mi to 32mi). Starting on Monday, I will be using the 18 week 55 mile Pfitzinger marathon plan targeting the Mississauga Marathon on May 10th. As this program uses a Monday-Sunday week rather than the Sunday-Saturday scheme I've been using here, I'll be posting a separate review of my long run tomorrow and then begin doing weekly reports with the new weekly structure next Sunday.

The other tricky part with this plan is that it uses imperial measures instead of metric, so I'll have to figure out how to handle that. In the short term, I'll likely stick with metric units and simply create programmed exercises for my Polar with the units manually converted. Longer term, however, I'll have to work on getting myself familiar with imperial measurements when running (ie getting a feel for min/mi vs. min/km).

Upcoming Week:
Sun 21.1K LSD
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 7mi (11.25K) w/10x100m
Wed (AM/PM) 30K Cycle
Thurs 9mi (14.5K) Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 4mi (6.5K) Recovery
Sun 12mi (19.25K) LSD

Either way, I'll begin increasing mileage on a weekly basis very soon and will be exploring new ground over the next little while. Up to this point, the longest run that I've ever done has been about 1h48m (21.1km) and over the coming weeks I will be going well beyond that limit. Hopefully my work over the last couple of months has built up a good base to prepare me for this task ;)

2008: Year in Review

This time last year, I had never run seriously and had trouble keeping it up for more than a few minutes. I started with a learn to run clinic in early January, worked my way up to 5K, then pushed myself through a 15K race and eventually finished a half marathon in late September. At this point, I'm about to start formally training for a full marathon and can only hope that this coming year will be nearly as productive.

Unfortunately I didn't properly separate the running and walking sessions for the first half of the year, so I'm not sure how much each sport contributed to the overall totals. Either way, the basic totals are as follows:

Total Distance on Foot (Running + Walking):	5,698.4km (3,540.8 mi)
Total Distance on the Bike (since Late August):	2,765.5km (1,718.4 mi)
Total Distance Overall:	8,463.8km (5,259.2 mi)

To put that in context, 5,700km is approximately the distance from Toronto to San Francisco through Vancouver ;) With the cycling factored in, add in another leg to Austin, TX. Looking back, that is a staggering distance that speaks to the amount of work that was put into my training.

To outline the progress that has been made over the last year, the following table illustrates some major metrics that have changed significantly.

	01/01/2007	01/01/2008	31/12/2008
Weight	240lbs	180lbs	151lbs
HR-Rest	74bpm	62bpm	43bpm
Running Index	?	41	66

My weight is now approximately where I want it, so the objective for the new year is simply to improve my overall performance for racing purposes. I've outlined my plan in previous entries, and will likely post a more detailed version in the next week or so.

Week 52: Review

As expected, it was quite a busy week so I wasn't able to get in everything that I had planned. Fortunately, I was able to fit in all of my runs as scheduled, so only the cycling and walking sessions were hurt by this. The weather did make some of the runs this week harder than normal (Sunday's session especially), however, and I had to shovel out the driveway a few times so I got in a little extra work one way or the other ;)

Weekly Totals:
Running: 58km
Walking: 15km
Cycling: 80km
Total: 153km

With Christmas now winding down, I plan to focus on getting as much in as possible in the upcoming week. Things will naturally still be a bit busy, but with only a couple of weeks to go before I formally start training for the next season I want to make sure that I'm in as good condition as possible.

Upcoming Week:
Sun (AM/PM) 21.1K LSD
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8K Tempo
Wed (AM/PM) 30K Cycle/10K Steady
Thurs 10K Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 10K Steady

Week 51: Review

As Christmas approaches things are getting busier, so I wasn't able to get in all of the sessions that I would have liked. Thankfully, I managed to get all of my running and most of my cycling in, and the walking took the brunt of it. Fortunately, most of the bad weather this week ended up falling on my off days so things actually worked out pretty well.

The only exception to this was my 10K run on Saturday morning, as the snowfall from the day before made it much harder to run than normal. As such, my pace was a significantly lower than normal 5:06/km (vs. 4:45/km). Further, it was also extremely cold (-25C) but fortunately there wasn't any appreciable wind so with the proper clothing that didn't pose too much of a problem. Either way, given the nasty weather this week I do count myself lucky that I missed most of it ;)

Weekly Totals:
Running: 60km
Walking: 14km
Cycling: 125km
Total: 199km

The next week is supposed to be pretty nasty weather-wise, and tomorrow's run especially is going to be difficult. They're calling for another 8cm tonight (combined with 15cm that's already on the ground from Friday) with another 15cm to come sometime tomorrow. Temperatures will likely be somewhat higher, but there will likely be much higher winds so that might offset any advantages. Either way, I'll just focus on getting my heart rate in the right zone and my pace will be what it is ;)

Naturally, with Christmas this week the schedule is going to be tighter than normal so I'll likely be missing a few sessions. I'll do everything in my power to keep my running mileage where it is, but the walking and cycling are likely to take a few unplanned hits this week.

Upcoming Week:
Sun (AM/PM) 21.1K LSD
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8K Tempo
Wed (AM/PM) 30K Cycle/10K Steady
Thurs 10K Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 10K Steady

Taking Advantage of the Weather

As noted in my previous posts, the weather lately has been somewhat hostile and has significantly complicated my running sessions. Fortunately, aside from a little rain the weather was much better than it has been in a while - little to no wind and a comfortable 6C. There was still a bit of snow left on the ground from previous days, but most of the pathways were clear so I didn't expect that to be a huge issue.

As I was busy in the morning, I moved the run back to the afternoon and headed out a little after 3:00pm. In addition, I figured that I'd try out a slightly different route than normal, as when I do start increasing mileage again the more roads I'm familiar with the easier it will be to plan things out. The route that I selected incorporated the same return path (and primary hills) that I have been running over the last few weeks, but I took a major road out rather than the residential streets.

The first kilometer was a bit slow as the roads still had a good deal of slush, but once I got out of the subdivision things cleared up nicely. After a quick 22 second stop at the traffic lights, I picked it up again and headed out at a faster pace. I was able to maintain that pace (~4:41/km) for the next seven and a half kilometers without any issues. At this juncture, I was at the southernmost point in the route and began making my way back north. After stopping for another set of traffic lights (12 sec), I had about 2km left to flat ground to run before I hit the hills.

I managed to maintain a 4:45/km pace over this segment and slowed down once I hit the hills to keep my heart rate on track. With the reduced pace (~5:15/km), I managed to keep my heart rate below 170bpm and was still feeling pretty good by the time I cleared them. I was now at the 12km mark and making good time, so I elected to try and see how far I had progressed in the last couple of months. After a brief 24 second traffic stop, I picked it up for the home stretch.

When I got to the 18K mark, I had managed a 4:48/km pace and saw that I was within striking distance of my STWM time so I pushed it a little harder. At this point it started drizzling a little, but with the higher temperatures it was actually somewhat helpful. When I got to the 20K mark, I was at 1:35:38 and therefore needed to do the final 1.1km in 6:08.6 to meet my mark. At this point, I opened up to do the final stretch at a 4:23/km pace and hitting the mark at 1:40:25. Even working the traffic stops into the equation, my total time was still 1:41:23 or about 23 seconds faster than my race.

This certainly shows the benefits of the additional mileage that I've been doing over the last few weeks, as I didn't put anything near race pace into this run. It was certainly harder than my average long run, so it isn't the type of thing I'll do on a regular basis - however by this point I'm pretty well fully recovered so it didn't take too much out of me.

Either way, results are as follows:
Total Distance: 21.1km
Total Time: 1:40:25 (1:41:23 w/traffic stops)
Average Pace: 4:45/km
Average Heart Rate: 162bpm (71% HRR)

Full Telemetry:

Week 50: Review

While the weather this week was supposed to be pretty miserable, it ended up working out to be quite nice for pretty much all of my runs. This morning's 10K was certainly a cold one, but nothing that a few layers couldn't take care of. It was snowing quite a bit for my walk this afternoon, however not enough had accumulated yet to pose much of an issue for me (although the cars were having some trouble with it). Tomorrow is likely to be interesting, but I'll likely cover that in another post.

Thanks to that weather, all of my sessions this week went pretty much as planned. As such, the only thing of note was that I increased my tempo pace a little as my heart rate wasn't getting as high as it used to. I managed to complete my 8K run on Tuesday in 34:13 at roughly a 4:15 pace. My heart rate averaged about 172bpm, or a little under 75% HRR which is about right for this sort of run. For comparison, last week's tempo run averaged 165bpm for its 4:26 pace, which only works out to about 70% HRR.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 58km
Walking: 36km
Cycling: 150km
Total: 244km

Naturally, the storm system that is moving through right now is likely to make tomorrow's long run somewhat interesting. While I can deal with the cold, snow accumulation could add some complexity to my 20K route as the city often takes its time to clear some portions of it. Either way, there isn't a whole lot that I can do about it so it'll just be a matter of doing whatever I can to work around the obstacles. Fortunately, I'm not in any sort of formal training regimen so if I have to slow down a bit it won't be the end of the world ;)

Upcoming Week:
Sun (AM/PM) 21.1K LSD
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8K Tempo
Wed (AM/PM) 30K Cycle/10K Steady
Thurs 10K Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 10K Steady

Into the Cold...

As noted yesterday, the weather reports called for extreme cold and heavy winds today and they were pretty much right on. When I headed out for my 20K run this morning, the ambient temperature was -12C and a bitterly cold ~50km/h wind was coming out of the north-west. With the wind-chill factored in, this worked out to the equivalent of nearly -30C. As such, I put on the warmest running clothes that I had and made sure to minimize the amount of exposed skin. While I have run in colder weather than this, those runs were of a much shorter duration (less than 30 minutes), so the nearly two hours that this session would take would make for new ground.

Compounding this was the fact that the roads and sidewalks were in relatively bad condition, so I had to very closely watch my footing to avoid ice and uneven surfaces. Given that the route that I've been using for the last two weeks had some steep descents (up to 12%), I figured that it was worth taking another path to make sure I remained safe. Further, this route is largely a north-south path, so that north wind would be a significant problem on the way back (which is also where the biggest hills are located).

As such, I elected to take an out-and-back route to a large mall to the south east of me. This meant that the bulk of the route (and the majority of the hills) would be done in the east-west direction to avoid dealing with a headwind. Further, as it is a more developed area it is better shielded from the elements and the sidewalks were likely in better condition. Finally, as the half-way point was a relatively large indoor mall it gave me the option of going inside to warm up without having to stop.


Either way, after getting suited up I headed out a little before noon. The sidewalks in my area were covered in snow, so I did the first segment of the run on the side of the road. Unfortunately, the roads weren't perfectly clear either so it took a good deal more effort than usual to maintain speed. As such, my first kilometer was run at a much slower than planned 5:07/km pace. Fortunately, my heart rate was in the right ballpark so this wasn't a huge issue.

The next portion of the route was along higher traffic roads, and was run with the wind at my back, so I was able to pick it up a little more. Kilometers two through four were done at an average pace of 4:45/km, which was actually a little faster than planned. At about the 2.5km mark I was up to temperature and was feeling quite comfortable, which helped to alleviate my concerns about the cold.

At this point I began traveling east and approached the first large hill of the route (1600m long, 4% grade). Unfortunately, the sidewalk along this portion was covered in a heavy coating of snow so it took a good deal of effort to maintain speed. Unlike the previous sections, however, the traffic along this road travels at much higher speeds (~80km/h) so I had no option but to stick with the sidewalk.

When I hit the hill, this started to become an issue as running up the grade combined with fighting with the snowcover increased my breathing rate. Normally this wouldn't be a problem at all, but as my face was covered with a neck warmer I had to fight a bit harder to get that air in (as the fabric got sucked into my mouth when I inhaled). Fortunately, my heart rate wasn't affected much by this so it was more of a discomfort than a practical impediment to my performance.

Once I managed to crest the hill, the snowcover remained an issue so my speeds continued to be slower than planned (~5:05/km). As this was a LSD run, however, my focus was on keeping my heart rate down so I didn't worry about it too much. Either way, I pushed on until I hit the second hill along the route (a highway overpass, ~600m/5%). Given the shorter duration of this hill, however, it didn't pose much of an issue.

At this point (~9.5K), I was approaching the mall and had to make a choice as to whether I wanted to head inside or not. While I was feeling relatively good temperature-wise, the neck warmer was still an issue so a chance to pull it off for a short period to allow my breathing to catch up was quite attractive. Naturally, the downside to this option was that as it is only a few weeks before Christmas navigating through mall crowds at speed was not going to be easy. Either way, I figured it was worth a shot so I headed in at the north-west entrance.


Once I cleared the doors, I took the face mask, hat and gloves off and continued heading south through the walkway. While there was a good deal of traffic to deal with (as you can see from my pace variability in the telemetry), it wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting. Naturally, I did go slower than outside (averaging a 5:16/km pace), but I did manage to get my breathing back under control and my sweat-logged clothing had a chance to dry out a bit. As I approached the eastern end of the mall, I put my stuff back on and headed back into the cold.

Since the sidewalk on the north side of the road appeared to be a little more clear than the south side I was using before I elected to switch sides for the return trip. There was still a good deal of snow on the ground, however it wasn't quite as bad so I was able to average a 4:59/km pace for kilometers twelve through fourteen. Breathing became an issue again, but I found a few ways to work around that so it wasn't quite as big an issue. When I got back to the first hill, I had to cross over to the southern side of the street again. Fortunately, the rise in this direction was much shorter (500m/4%) so it took a good deal less effort to work through it.

After another decent kilometer (4:58/km), I had to turn right and begin to head north to get back home. Unfortunately, this meant I was running directly into the cold wind that was at my back for the start. Fortunately, I only had two more kilometers left to go so I bunkered down and pushed my way through. I managed to maintain a 5:00/km pace for the 19th kilometer, and then opened up for the final stretch. The last kilometer was painful as I was in an open area with no cover, but I managed to push through a 4:42K nonetheless. Once I hit the 20km mark, I broke back to a walk to begin cooling down.

Once I got home, I did my stretches and then began stripping off all of my protective clothing. My jacket and neck warmer were pretty crunchy at this point, and my hat had a nice quarter-inch thick coating of ice around the brim. It certainly illustrated exactly how cold it was out there, but fortunately the gear did a relatively good job of keeping me in the right temperature range. The neck warmer was really the only problem for me, so I'll have to look into some alternative choices for scenarios such as this.

Either way, results are as follows:
Total Distance: 20.0km
Total Time: 1:49:01
Average Pace: 4:57/km
Average Heart Rate: 162bpm (71% HRR)

Full Telemetry:

Week 49: Review

While the weather this week was supposed to be pretty miserable, it ended up working out to be quite nice for pretty much all of my runs. This morning's 10K was certainly a cold one, but nothing that a few layers couldn't take care of. It was snowing quite a bit for my walk this afternoon, however not enough had accumulated yet to pose much of an issue for me (although the cars were having some trouble with it). Tomorrow is likely to be interesting, but I'll likely cover that in another post.

Thanks to that weather, all of my sessions this week went pretty much as planned. As such, the only thing of note was that I increased my tempo pace a little as my heart rate wasn't getting as high as it used to. I managed to complete my 8K run on Tuesday in 34:13 at roughly a 4:15 pace. My heart rate averaged about 172bpm, or a little under 75% HRR which is about right for this sort of run. For comparison, last week's tempo run averaged 165bpm for its 4:26 pace, which only works out to about 70% HRR.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 58.3km
Walking: 39.2km
Cycling: 150km
Total: 247km

Naturally, the storm system that is moving through right now is likely to make tomorrow's long run somewhat interesting. While I can deal with the cold, snow accumulation could add some complexity to my 20K route as the city often takes its time to clear some portions of it. Either way, there isn't a whole lot that I can do about it so it'll just be a matter of doing whatever I can to work around the obstacles. Fortunately, I'm not in any sort of formal training regimen so if I have to slow down a bit it won't be the end of the world ;)

Upcoming Week:
Sun (AM/PM) 20K LSD
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8K Tempo
Wed (AM/PM) 30K Cycle/10K Steady
Thurs 10K Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 10K Steady

Calm Before the Storm

As I'm writing this the snow is starting to accumulate outside, and we're likely in for a few days of nasty weather. I intended to do an 11K walk this afternoon, however given the weather I'm likely going to do a short ride on the bike instead to work around the snow. Fortunately, tomorrow calls for a ride as well so I might be able to work around the worst of this storm. I'll likely have some significant ground cover to deal with during my Tuesday Tempo run, however that's easier to deal with than what's outside right now ;)


Either way, the weather this morning was much nicer so I managed to get my 20K LSD run in without any issues. Same basic route as last week, with a few small changes near the end as the sidewalks through the park were clear this time around. Unlike last week, however, I was more familiar with the route which allowed me to be a little more strategic about the pacing.

Things started out really well, so I stepped up the pace a little more than planned and managed to hold it for the duration of the run. I got a little warm last week as I over-did the layering, so dressing a little more intelligently this time around certainly paid off as my heart rate remained lower despite the faster pace. The weather overall was quite nice, with a comfortable 3C temperature and an overcast sky. The wind was brutal in some of the exposed portions of the route (unfortunately coinciding with the uphill portions), but most of the course is well shielded so it didn't pose too much of a problem.

I hit the 20K mark in 1:36:52, clocking an average pace of 4:50min/km (vs 4:55min/km last week) and a average heart rate of 157bpm (vs 159bpm). Unlike last week, however, I felt like I could have easily gone further if I wanted to. While I was tempted, I elected to stick with the plan as I wanted to be careful not to overdo things. Full telemetry is provided below:

Week 48: Review

This week was a lot more stable than the last, and fortunately all of my scheduled sessions went as planned. I did intentionally scale back the cycling a bit this week to strike a balance between the fitness benefits and staying motivated. While the 2.5 hours it takes to ride 80km is fine outside, it is mind-numbingly boring when sitting on the trainer. I won't be able to clock the mileage that I was last month, however I also want to make sure that this doesn't become a chore.

On a contrasting note, I expanded my Sunday run to 20km last Sunday in order to get myself over the 35 mile/week limit and stabilize at that point. Given the modified distance, I also elected to try a new route as well. Rather than the usual laps around a subdivision south of me, I did an out and back route that gave me a little more variety. As I'm not in a formal training schedule, I figured that now is the time to experiment with things a bit to give myself some more options once I do get into the program.


In addition to mixing it up a little, this route added substantially larger hills than my normal route provides so it made things a little more challenging. Given the topology of the Around the Bay race that I'm aiming for, working some hills like this into my schedule is likely good preparation. Either way, as things went well on this route last week I'll likely give it another shot this time around before I start playing with other options.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 58.5km
Walking: 45.4km
Cycling: 120.1km
Total: 224km

As noted above, the plan at this juncture is simply to hold myself at the current mileage so next week's schedule will be pretty much a mirror image of this week. It does look like the weather is going to be a little more of a variable in the upcoming days, but there isn't a whole lot that can be done about that ;)

Upcoming Week:
Sun (AM/PM) 20K LSD
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8K Tempo
Wed (AM/PM) 30K Cycle/10K Steady
Thurs 10K Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 10K Steady

One thing that I have been playing around with is the possibility of getting a VO2Max test done. The marathon is a delicate balancing act of various different physiological characteristics, so knowing where the various limits are would be quite useful. I'm still not 100% sure what my maximum heart rate is, and while my current estimate of 215bpm (my highest recorded heart rate) has worked well for me so far the extra stresses of the marathon could easily bring out the difference between theory and reality. Further, having a clinically measured VO2Max value would allow me to get precise readings on my caloric expenditure, thus simplifying the process of figuring out my nutritional requirements during long runs.

The plan...

For the last few weeks I've been trying to figure out my major training goals for the next cycle as I'm getting near the point where I need to start making preparations. My major goal this time around was to work my way up to a full marathon sometime during the next year. The question, of course, was how to best go about reaching that goal.

The two main concepts that I was playing around with were to either go right ahead and target the Mississauga Marathon in mid-May, or to target the 30km Around the Bay race in March as a stepping stone for a full in one of the Toronto marathons. The former had the advantage of allowing me to train in cooler weather as well as getting me to my target faster. While there is more than enough time to properly train for this distance, I was concerned a bit that the jump from 21.1km to 42.2km was a bit too big to make in one big leap. Naturally, the latter had the advantage of allowing me to fit in another training cycle to climb to 30K first and get comfortable with longer distances. The other advantage to the latter was that the weather on race day would likely be better.

After playing around with training schedules, I've settled on working around a bit of a hybrid plan. I'll use the 55mi/18wk Pfitzinger marathon program targeted for the Mississauga marathon, with Around the Bay worked in as a tune-up race. In mid-March, I'll make the call on whether I feel that training has gone well enough for the full marathon. If it has, then I'll go ahead with the plan as designed. If it hasn't however, I'll refocus on running ATB as my goal race and then prepare to start a different training cycle for the Toronto marathons.

This gives me the benefit of getting in a 30K race either way, and the ability to select my route based on how things actually progress rather than having to guestimate that at this juncture. Further, if the first time around doesn't work out I'll have first-hand experience with the training program when I re-start it in the summer.

Either way, I'll be officially starting this program in the first week of January through to the race on May 11th. Until then, I'll be holding at my current 58km/36mi per week level until that point to get my legs ready for the coming increase in mileage.

Week 47: Review

Despite a major snow storm and significantly cooler weather, I managed to get all of my running sessions in as planned. In some cases icy trails did make things a bit difficult, but fortunately most of those patches were relatively short and easy to work around. Naturally, the extra work of getting suited up for running in the cold is taking a bit of getting used to. Given the choice between the hot summer and cold like this, however, this is certainly preferable as it's easier to add more layers to stay warm that fight off overheating ;)

Unfortunately I wasn't so lucky with walking and cycling this week. During my cycling session in the previous week, I tweaked my right calf muscle while doing one-legged drills. I didn't think much of it at the time as it didn't really bother me much. By my walk on the following Saturday afternoon, however, it began to hurt a bit more and continued throughout the next couple of days. Fortunately, it didn't appear to bother me at all when running so it didn't get in the way of those workouts. To keep it that way, however, I elected to avoid the walking and cycling sessions until it healed.

As such, I missed my cycling sessions on Sunday and Monday, as well as my walking session on Tuesday afternoon. This was compounded by getting stuck in traffic due to a snowstorm on Wednesday, so I lost another cycling session there as well. Fortunately, all signs of the pain were gone by Wednesday so I was able to get back into my normal routine by Thursday. Combined, this took a big chunk out of my overall mileage but as the walking and cycling are simply supplementary to my running routine it didn't form much of a practical setback.

With that said, my cycling session on Friday went much better than the week before. To avoid boredom I mixed in some interval work, which definitely made it easier to keep going. As such, this time I was able to keep going for a full 50km. I'm not sure if this tactic will work to get me back up to 80K, but I'll have to work my way back up to that level to see.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 56km
Walking: 25km
Cycling: 50km
Total: 131km

As this was my third week of running 56km and things have gotten quite comfortable, I'll be stepping up the long run to 20km tomorrow. That will bring my weekly mileage up to 58km (a little over 36 miles) where I'll likely stay for the foreseeable future. I'm also adjusting the cycling plan down a bit this week to deal with getting used to riding indoors. Other than those two adjustments, however, everything else will be identical to the previous week.

Upcoming Week:
Sun (AM/PM) 20K LSD
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8K Tempo
Wed (AM/PM) 30K Cycle/10K Steady
Thurs 30K Cycle/10K Steady
Fri 50K Cycle
Sat 10K Steady

Week 46: Review

The weather this week was pretty unpredictable, and disrupted my ability to do my cycling routine much more than usual. Rather than the ~200km per week I've been averaging lately, I only managed to get 40km in this week. As noted in my previous posts, as this is unlikely to get any better I elected to move the bike inside to maintain some degree of consistency in my training.

Fortunately, the weather hasn't been much of a problem for running and walking so I managed to get all of my planned sessions in. The only (minor) modification to the schedule was that I ran Thursday's 10K through High Park closer to tempo pace than the steady pace that was called for. This wasn't really intended, but the enthusiasm of running this course rather than my usual routes got the best of me. I managed to average about a 4:34/km pace, which is somewhere in between my ~4:20 tempo pace and 4:45 steady pace.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 56km
Walking: 94km
Cycling: 40km
Total: 190km

Going forward, I'm going to have to tweak my cycling routine a bit to adapt to using the indoor trainer. The longer rides are unlikely to be feasible inside, so I will likely have to do shorter rides more often and/or dial up the intensity a bit. Fortunately, the cycling is simply a means to improve my overall fitness, so losing a bit of mileage on this front isn't a huge deal.

As for the running, I will likely be holding at the current level for the time being. I was flirting with pushing the long run a little further this week, but as the weather is supposed to be pretty miserable tomorrow (wet snow) so I'll likely hold off on that for now. Either way, it's getting down to the point where I have to figure out what I will be doing next season so I can start preparing for it.

Upcoming Week:
Sun (AM/PM) 18K LSD/30K Cycle
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 8K Tempo
Wed (AM/PM) 30K Cycle/10K Steady
Thurs 30K Cycle/10K Steady
Fri 30K Cycle
Sat 10K Steady

Breaking in the trainer...

As mentioned yesterday, due to the weather that we get this time of year I elected to make the move to riding the bike inside until Spring. With the tire and skewer changed yesterday, I cleaned off the bike this morning, hooked it up to the trainer and made sure that everything was working. After lunch, I got changed into my cycling gear, switched on a couple of fans and got started with my normal routine.

While I had originally planned for an 80km ride, I elected to modify that to a 30K ride instead as the prospect of two and a half hours of staring at a wall wasn't terribly enticing. I set up a television to fend off boredom, but there isn't a whole lot on at that time of day so its utility was somewhat limited. Fortunately the bike and trainer (Kurt Kinetic Road Machine) were much quieter than I expected so, unlike my treadmill, it was possible to clearly hear the TV while riding. As such, my best bet is likely to do my longer rides at night when enough good stuff is on to entertain me ;)

Either way, it did get the job done and wasn't quite as mind numbing as I expected it to be. I managed to cover the equivalent of 30km in a little under an hour, averaging a 30.8km/h pace for the session. Naturally, longer rides will likely be a different thing, but if I can find something decent on television they might not be that big of an issue either. The one big upside, however, is that not having to deal with stop signs or traffic means that my average speed is a lot more representative of overall performance than on the road.


One of the other big advantages to using this trainer is that it allows me to monitor my power output, something that would normally take relatively expensive equipment to do. As the manufacturer of this model carefully calibrates their trainers at the factory, it is possible to calculate the power output directly from the speed of the bicycle's rear wheel. Unlike riding outside (where wind speed/direction, road surface, incline, etc. all play a part), all of the resistance is supplied by the fluid chamber so this mapping is predictable.

In this case, my average power output works out to a little under 240 watts. My maximum speed was 48km/h (did a sprint near the end of the session), working out to a peak output of about 680 watts for about a minute. Have to do a little more reading to see whether those numbers are good or not, but it is definitely interesting to have an objective metric to measure my cycling progress with ;)

10K in High Park

As I've noted in the last few updates, the weather has gotten to the point where it is getting in the way of maintaining my cycling routine at the level that I'd like. While adverse weather is little more than an inconvenience on foot, it can pose a significant risk while riding so I've aired on the side of caution. Unfortunately, leaving enough time for recovery for my Running and Cycling schedules limits my flexibility so this has resulted in significant mileage deficits. Given that it's the middle of November, things are unlikely to get any better until Spring so I elected to make the move over to my indoor trainer.

As such, I headed down to the bike store earlier today to have them make some adjustments for use on the trainer (changing out the rear tire and skewer). As the shop is adjacent to High Park and I knew it would take about an hour to do the work, I figured that I'd kill two birds with one stone and do my 10K run while I waited. Aside from more efficiently using my time, it also gave me an opportunity to compare my fitness to the 5K Harry's Spring Run-Off race that I did earlier in the year.

Either way, after dropping off the bike I suited up and started running down Bloor street toward the park. I entered the park at the North entrance and down West Rd., breaking off to a trail alongside Grenadier Pond, down the side of the Queensway and finally up Spring Rd to complete the first lap. At this point (the half-way mark), I then headed back down West Rd. for another lap. After the second time up the hill, I then headed up to Bloor and back to the store.

In the end, I managed to reach the 10K mark in 45m57s with an average pace of 4:34/km. My heart rate averaged 167bpm over the entire route, although it did reach 180 when heading up the Spring Rd. hill. For comparative purposes, I managed to hit the 5K mark in 22m54s which was a little more than a minute faster than the Spring Run-Off race last year (where I was pushing much harder than I was today). Regardless, the hills were much less of an impediment this time around which definitely made the route a lot easier than last time.



Overall, it was nice to give this route another shot and the weather managed to hold out quite nicely despite the threat of rain. Going off of my regular routes is certainly a good thing every once and a while, as it highlights the gains that are often harder to see on day-to-day runs. I'll have to make more of an effort to do similar runs in the future, possibly doing a few of the same races I did last season.

Either way, with the bike prepared I'll likely be setting up the trainer tomorrow and giving it a shot. I generally hate running on a treadmill, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to handle staring at a wall for the two and half hours it takes to ride 50 miles, but we'll see how it goes.

Week 45: Review

Aside from the rain on Monday, it was a pretty good week weather-wise. Naturally, that rain prevented me from doing my 80km ride on Monday, however I partially made up for it by doing an extra 50km ride on Tuesday morning instead of the planned walk. Unfortunately, I also had to cut Sunday afternoon's ride a bit short as I forgot to take into account the time change when figuring out when the sun was going down. Aside from those issues, however, everything else went as planned.

The 18K LSD run on Sunday was certainly a lot easier with the cooler weather that we are experiencing right now. I managed to maintain an average pace of 4:52 for the duration, hitting the 18km mark a few seconds before 1:28. Further, I also managed to keep my average heart rate down to a very comfortable 154bpm (~64%HRR). I'll likely do another 18K tomorrow, and if all goes well I can play with the idea of pushing it a little further the following week.

On the cycling front, with some great weather on Tuesday I elected to go off of my normal route and give some bigger roads a try. After doing about three laps of my normal route to warm up, I took a quick break and then headed out along a north-south route that I've heard good things about. From an exercise point of view, it is definitely a much better route as it allowed me to ride non-stop at a steady 34km/h pace for almost an hour. Further, there were some very good rolling hills at points in this route, which added significantly to the challenge. The downside, of course, was that the speed limit was about 80km/h for most of the route, so the vehicular traffic was going a lot faster than it does on the residential roads that I'm used to. In addition, it primarily passes through farmer's fields, so on a windy day there would be little to protect me (and at these speeds headwinds can be very significant). This type of riding will certainly take some getting used to, however there is only one way to do that ;)

Weekly Totals:
Running: 56km
Walking: 38km
Cycling: 194km
Total: 288km

The other significant thing this week was that my year-to-date running and walking mileage crossed the 5000km mark. Unfortunately, I didn't start separating the two sports in my training logs until the middle of July, so I'm not exactly sure how much each of them contributed to that total. My ballpark estimate would be somewhere in the region of 2000K run and 3000K walked, but without the time to go back and modify all of those entries I can't be sure. Either way, that is a lot of ground covered over these few months and hopefully just the precursor to many more!


As for the upcoming week, the plan is to pretty much stay the course. I've now gotten back to the peak mileage of my last training cycle, so it's just a matter of getting my body used to this level of work before stepping it up again. If all goes well, I might push things ahead a little in the following week, but we'll have to wait and see on that front.

Upcoming Week:
Sun (AM/PM) 18K LSD
Mon 80K Cycle
Tue 8K Tempo
Wed (AM/PM) 10K Steady/50K Cycle
Thurs 10K Steady
Fri 80K Cycle
Sat 10K Steady

Week 44: Review

A combination of rain, heavy winds and the first significant snow storm of the season conspired to mess with my cycling schedule this week. I did manage to get in a 50K ride on Thursday and my scheduled half-century ride on Friday, but other than that I didn't get any further time on the bike. This is starting to become a bit of a trend, however there isn't a whole lot that I can do in these scenarios.

Fortunately, the adverse weather wasn't much of a problem for my running or walking sessions. All of my runs went as planned, and I am definitely getting to the point where this level of mileage is beginning to become comfortable. The step up to 8K on my tempo run went well, and despite fighting a 35-40km/h headwind for most of the run I still managed to maintain my planned pace (4:30/km). Other than that, last week's schedule was pretty much a mirror of the week before so there isn't much to report there.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 52km
Walking: 77km
Cycling: 135km
Total: 264km

Given the success this week, the plan is pretty much to hold to the same thing this coming week. I'll be increasing tomorrow's LSD run to 18K to get myself used to longer runs again, and I'll likely bump next Saturday's run up to 10K as well. That will bring my total mileage to about 56km (~35 miles), keeping me climbing upwards but doing so slowly enough that things can remain comfortable. I will have to make a decision as to what my plans are for the next training cycle relatively soon, however the objective at this point remains building a strong base for whatever that will be.

With respect to cycling, that will largely be dependent on what the weather permits. The forecasts appear to indicate that Monday will be a problem again, however it's looking like the rest of the week should be nice so I might be able to make up for that. Either way, given that it's November now I'll likely be moving the bike onto the trainer sooner than later - however I'm trying to get in as much time outside as is humanly possible before that happens.

Upcoming Week:
Sun (AM/PM) 18K LSD
Mon 80K Cycle
Tue 8K Tempo
Wed (AM/PM) 10K Steady/50K Cycle
Thurs 10K Steady
Fri 80K Cycle
Sat 10K Steady