Does your pace pass the talking test?

I convinced Nathan Wheeler to join the miCoach crowd and get a Pacer and as far as I can tell, he likes it a lot. The first thing I noticed when he started uploading his workouts (I’m his ‘coach’ in his miCoach Circle) was that his heart rate was through the roof.

Given that he asked a question about “Lungs are on fire” during running, it was no wonder with a heart rate of over 180 even running at a moderate pace. As I recommended him in the answer: do the talking test! The talking test basically means that you should run at a pace where you’re still able to talk. Its probably the most frequent beginner mistake and one of the biggest causes of injuries in beginning athletes.

He stubbornly maintained his high heart rate (even while using the Pacer feedback) until last week something funny happened. He uses custom workouts, because C210K isn’t available through miCoach and he picked a workout from the wrong week. For those who don’t know, C210k workouts alternate between running and walking ever so many minutes. Because he ended up having a workout that was a week ahead of him, his workout probably all of a sudden required 30% longer running intervals! End result? He had to quit the workout early because it was too heavy.

My advice was: you don’t have to quit, you should be running at a lower heart rate! At first, I thought he didn’t buy my advice, until I spotted this workout:

He stayed below the red zone during all his running intervals! And I believe it must have felt great!

I’m convinced that anyone that’s able to walk, is able to run. We just need to change our perception of how fast running has to be in order to be called running. The real difference between walking and running is the transition from a bi-pedal to an uni-pedal stance phase (standing on one leg). So you wouldn’t even have to really go any faster, you just need to hop a little bit more! True, this nearly doubles the load on each leg during each step (you have to carry the whole body weight all of a sudden), but as long as you don’t go much faster that shouldn’t be much of a problem.

So to anyone out there thinking they can’t run: take the breathing test and I’m sure you’ll be able to run in no time!