Base Fitness

I have been running on and off for a few years and have enetered a few 12k events. Along the way I have had a few injuries, more recently I had started to get shinsplints after increasing my intensity and mileage for the City to Surf. I have never been a massively quick or fit runner.

So, after a few weeks of very very minimal running to rest the legs, I am considering starting again, from scratch, to build up my base fitness.

My plan is to spend the next 12 weeks doing easy 4 or 5 k runs, once a week, taking it really easy. I will also be doing other activities like cycling or pump classes.  After I have bulit this base I will start slowly increasing my mileage and, eventually my speed.

Do this sound feasible? Worthwhile? Has anyone ever cut back to next to nothing and started over? I want to be an 'ok' runner - not to break any records but to be able to run confidently and (hopefully) without injury.

Thoughts?

Sounds like a good plan to me. It's good that you'll be incorporating other exercise into your week on top of your weekly run -I think this will help -you should notice the difference in fitness during each weekly run then as your fitness will be improving. Take your time; like you said, you don't want to break any records, so avoid breaking anything else -(injury-wise!) by taking it slow! Good luck!

Hey Helen,

I think you hit the nail on the head by saying that you plan to take it easy. Good on you for getting back out there after your injuries. Good luck with it all :)

I agree, rest is best!

This brings me to another question.

If I am buliding this base of fitness - at what rate should I try to kee my heartrate at? I read that slow runs were good at just adding miles to the legs, but it also said to work at quite a low heart rate for these runs. But what eaxctly is low?

Helen, 220 - your age will give you a rough idea of your maximum heart rate (there are other more complicated ways), from that you can work out roughly what HR to work at - aerobic exercise for base fitness is usually done somewhere around 60% of max HR. You don't need to be that detailed and technical though - run at a pace where you can still talk a reasonable sentence (about 8 - 10 words) before you have to draw another breath and you'll be near enough spot on .

Thanks Rob_Barber

I am 29 so max heart rate is 191. 60% of that is 114. (that seems a bit low! I think that would be my walking heart rate!) anyway with this in mind I will strap on the polar, head out and see how I go!

I have just got back from a run and am a little disheartened by how it went. After a warm up and walking briskly up a hill I was already at 116bpm.

My heart aret was hovering around 158 - 164 most of the way. This was over 4km and doing 7 minute kilometers.

Am I really thay unfit?!

So, in trying to complete low heart rate runs, when it creeps up shoud i stop and walk? Or shoudl I not worry too much about it and just do what feels low intensity, even though the heart rate monitor is telling me otherwise?

I think the temperature over there will have quite an effect on your heart rate.

Go by feel for sure Helen - see how it compares to the HRM. Talk test is good (though you do get funny looks sometimes when people notice yo talking to yourself). 1 -2 words only before you have to draw a breath and your effort level is up around about 90 - 95% max HR. 4 - 5 words and it equates to about 75 - 80% max HR. 8 words or thereabouts and you're about right for base aerobic fitness. You can also judge by using a scale of 1 to 10 for your "rate of percieved exertion" (RPE), where 1 is sitting on your bum watching tele, and 10 is an all out sprint. Aerobic base should be in the range of 5 to 7 RPE.

Don't worry too much about what you have seen today, use the HRM to give you a guide, don't take what it says as gospel though, they're not always right. You could put on your HRM and also manually check your pulse to give you a good idea of whether or not it is reading accurately. Best way to do this when exercising is to stop, instantly take a 10 second reading and multiply by 6. reason being that when you stop to take your pulse it will fall pretty rapidly and so a longer measurement will give a false reading.