Quick HR training question

IMHO, no.  Better value and usability in a field test.

When you are rested (as in not worn out from other workouts from the days before), warm up 10 minutes then start your HR for a 30 minute sustained effort at around your 10k - 1/2 marathon pace.  Basically something you could sustain for an hour.  At 10 minutes into that effort, hit your lap button and record the next 20 minutes.  After that warm down.  That measured 20 minutes of the hard portion of the run will give you a rough approximation of what people call their LT heart rate and from there you can establish your zones (the number is the AVERAGE heart rate for that period).

To me, VO2 max. testing is just a waste of money for normal athletes and other than having something they can go "Huh, that's interesting" as you can have a more effective zone schedule set up with the field test.

Edited by Daremo 2009-06-26 10:19 AM

A time trial to estimate your LT HR or pace.  There are many ways to do it if you want (one popular one is a 30' TT where you use your avg. HR for the last 20' as your LT HR).  A race lasting around an hour is always the best, but you can make a reasonable stab at it in shorter training bouts and then modify based on how you feel when you train off those numbers for a bit (or re-test again).