Low Heart Rate Training – Why I’ve Changed the Way I Run

Four weeks into low heart rate training, I’m learning to forget about pace, swallow my pride and embrace the steady plod. With most runs sitting around 125–135 BPM, one weekly tempo session and the occasional battering from Ollie, is slowing down actually making me a better runner?

After my first DNF, I knew something needed to change.

My immediate priority was getting my knee right, but the Castle to Castle disaster had also made me think about the way I was training. I didn’t just want to recover and then go straight back to doing exactly the same thing. I wanted more miles with less strain on my legs.

So I decided to try a different type of running.

One that’s proving painful in an entirely different way.

Low heart rate training.

The physical side is supposed to be easy. The mental side, I’m discovering, can be anything but.

Learning to Slow Down

Like a lot of runners, I’ve always been guilty of paying too much attention to pace.

You go out for what is supposed to be an easy run, glance at your watch and suddenly decide you’re running too slowly. Before long, you’ve picked the pace up and your easy run isn’t particularly easy anymore.

Then there’s Strava.

You can tell yourself you’re only racing yourself as much as you like, but there’s always somebody you know who’s just run the same route quicker. Suddenly you’re comparing splits with Dave from accounts, who has absolutely no idea the two of you are apparently locked in a bitter athletic rivalry.

Low heart rate training takes a lot of that away.

My focus now is heart rate, not pace. If that means slowing down, I slow down. If it means swallowing my pride when somebody runs past me, that’s what I have to do.

Rein it in. Cruise. Let them go.

That sounds incredibly simple.

It isn’t.

Why I’m Doing It

Castle to Castle was probably the wake-up call I needed.

During that race, everything felt all over the place. My knee hurt, my fuelling and hydration eventually slipped, my head went and I never really felt like I was in control of the effort.

Afterwards, I started thinking less about how quickly I wanted to run and more about how I actually wanted running to feel.

I want to be able to run more miles each week without constantly feeling battered. I want to finish an easy run feeling fresh enough that I could go out and run again the following day. Most importantly, I want to build the aerobic base that I’m going to need if I want to keep taking on longer distances.

But there’s another reason for doing this that has nothing to do with numbers.

I want to find my love for running again.

I don’t want every glance at my watch to be about whether I’m running quickly enough. Admittedly, I’ve now replaced that obsession with constantly checking whether I’m in Zone 2 or Zone 3, but one problem at a time.

I want to get outside, settle into a comfortable effort and actually take in some of the places running takes me.

If I can become a better ultra runner at the same time, even better.

I’m now four weeks into this training block, which is long enough to have formed a few opinions about low-heart-rate training, but nowhere near long enough to start declaring it a miracle cure.

So this isn’t a “low-heart-rate training transformed my running” article. Not yet, anyway.

It’s about why I’ve changed the way I train, what the first four weeks have actually been like, and what I’m hoping to get from it.

Forget the pace. Watch the heart rate. Build the miles.

And see what happens.

So What Am I Actually Doing?

Despite the DNF at Castle to Castle, I wasn’t starting completely from scratch. Running has been my hobby for a few years now and one of the main ways I keep myself fit, both physically and mentally, so I already had a pretty decent base to work from.

The idea wasn’t to suddenly throw everything I’d been doing in the bin. It was to give my training a bit more structure and, most importantly, make the majority of my running genuinely easy.

At the moment, a typical week consists of around four or five easy runs and one tempo session. For those easy runs, I’m generally trying to keep my heart rate somewhere in the 125–135 bpm range.

And I’ve actually grown to enjoy the steady plod.

There’s something quite liberating about looking at my watch and not caring what the pace says. If my heart rate is where I want it, I’m doing what I went out to do. Nobody gives you a medal for winning Tuesday’s easy run.

That’s the theory, anyway.

Then occasionally I go running with my friend Ollie.

Ollie is a completely different animal to me, and running with him has a habit of making all my newfound restraint disappear. The pace creeps up, the heart rate follows and before long I’m chasing him like a man possessed, desperately trying to keep up while completely ignoring the training philosophy I’ve spent the last four weeks convincing myself to follow.

Eventually I remember what I’m supposed to be doing, slap myself on the wrist and get back to the steady plod.

But I think there’s another lesson in there too: sometimes plans change.

I’m not training for the Olympics. Running with a mate and enjoying it is still part of why I do this in the first place. If one easy run ends up being a bit quicker than planned, I’m not going to spend the rest of the week worrying that I’ve ruined my training block.

The important thing is that the majority of my running is now controlled. I’m getting more comfortable at that lower effort, putting the miles in and, increasingly, actually enjoying slowing down.

Most of the time, anyway. Ollie remains a problem.

Four weeks in, I’m starting to realise that running slowly isn’t necessarily the boring part.

Learning to let yourself run slowly is the hard part.

Four Weeks In – What Have I Noticed?

I’m not going to sit here and pretend this is some sort of miracle worker.

I’m only four weeks into the training block. That’s nowhere near long enough for me to start claiming I’m suddenly a better runner because I’ve spent a month plodding around trying to keep my heart rate below 135.

But I will say this:

I feel bloody better for it.

There are little signs that things might be moving in the right direction. I feel like I can run marginally quicker at the same sort of heart rate than I could when I started, although four weeks isn’t enough time for me to read too much into that.

It’s not just the numbers either. My running actually feels better.

My posture feels better, my breathing feels more controlled and I’m no longer shuffling along like a caveman dragging his knuckles across the floor. I’m starting to feel more relaxed when I run rather than constantly fighting against the effort.

The biggest test so far was a 20-mile run.

I wasn’t interested in what pace I could average or how quickly I could get it finished. I had one main goal: get through 20 miles and still have relatively fresh legs at the end of it.

And I did.

For me, that was probably the biggest positive of the first four weeks. Twenty miles is still twenty miles, but finishing it without feeling like my legs had been put through a cement mixer was exactly the sort of thing I wanted from this training block.

There’s still plenty of work to do. Four weeks is a tiny snapshot, and I’m not about to start drawing massive conclusions from it.

But do I feel better? Yes.

Does running feel more controlled? Yes.

Do I feel like I’m heading in the right direction? Definitely.

Whether that translates into me actually becoming a better ultra runner is something I’ll find out further down the line.

For now, though, the steady plod continues.

Where Do I Go From Here?

So, for now, we carry on.

I’m four weeks into what I plan to make a 12-week training block, and the next eight weeks aren’t going to involve any dramatic changes. More easy running, one tempo session each week and, inevitably, the occasional battering from Ollie when I forget I’m supposed to be taking it easy.

As the weeks go on, I also want to make the training a little more specific to ultramarathons. That means using some of my longer runs to practise fuelling and carrying the kit I’d actually have with me on race day. There’s not much point building an engine capable of running all day if I forget how to put fuel in it.

I might even throw an event in towards the end of the block. If I do, I’d like to approach it differently from races I’ve done before. Rather than obsessing over pace or getting dragged along by everybody around me, the aim would be to control the effort, keep an eye on my heart rate and run my own race.

Which, given some of my previous efforts, would be progress in itself.

Then, at the end of the 12 weeks, I’ll come back to this properly.

I’ll look at the numbers, compare where I started with where I’ve ended up and see whether running at the same heart rate has actually become quicker and easier. More importantly, I’ll see whether I feel stronger, fresher and better prepared for the sort of distances I actually want to run.

Four weeks in, I’m encouraged.

Eight weeks to go.

Then we’ll find out whether the low-heart-rate dream I’ve been sold has actually become reality.