Maffetone revisited

When I last wrote about the Maffetone Method, I was training at a heart rate a little higher than what Dr. Maffetone recommends, and was trying to slowly work my way down.

All of that went out the window when the weather warmed up and I got off the treadmill and went outside. Although I have a heart rate monitor to wear outside (my treadmill has its own HRM), I just never got into the habit of having it control my pace. I ran less often, and when I did, my HR was well above my target.

Now that it's treadmill weather again, I'm going to try to keep my heart at the recommended rate. On Monday I set my treadmill to adjust my pace and incline to keep my heart rate at 127 bpm. I later realized that since I've had a birthday since I last calculated the formula, it was actually supposed to be 126 bpm.

I was expecting it to be slow, but not as slow as it turned out to be! It was my slowest run of the year by far. The only other run that was even close was a sluggish set of hill repeats.

I was a little worried that I'd be trudging along at a horribly slow pace for weeks, but the next two days went better. In retrospect, I think Monday's pace was a result of a very long day on Saturday at a robotics tournament, and then on Sunday I took a longer-than-usual run. I was pretty tired.

Yesterday and today I managed to keep my heart rate low while at a running pace a full minute per km faster than Monday, and also faster than when I started HR-based training back in February. Back then, I was targeting 138 bpm; now, at 12 fewer beats per minute, I'm going a little faster. I guess my summer of half-hearted non-Maffetone training didn't erase all of my aerobic gains.

I still have the problem of my treadmill sometimes giving me a few extra beats per minute before it slows me down. I may just set it to 123 bpm.