June 09 Training - In Review

June was a very difficult month for me as I was plagued with a right leg injury for a majority of the month. I only tallied 55 miles of running on thirteen outings for the month. Two of the thirteen events were races, a 5K and 10K. I ran 74 miles during the month of May.

It is hard to find a positive for June other than I persevered and continued training throughout this trying time. My lack of progress this month forced me to cancel the half marathon I had scheduled on June 28th in Fairfield Connecticut.

I have to remind myself I have been exceedingly sedentary for quite some time and it will require a fair amount of time to shed the physical rust I have accumulated.

One training change I need to make is to increase my aerobic exercise level within my current regimen. My heart rate data from my Garmin Forerunner 305 indicates I run a substantial amount of time in the 90-100% of my heart rate maximum. You enter the anaerobic realm at this high of a pace. I need to get within the 75-85% of HRM level and run for much longer periods of time, e.g. an hour or two.


Excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_exercise

Anaerobic exercise is exercise intense enough to trigger anaerobic metabolism. It is used by athletes in non-endurance sports to promote strength, speed and power and by body builders to build muscle mass. Muscles trained using anaerobic exercise develop differently as compared to aerobic exercise, leading to greater performance in short duration, high intensity activities, which last from mere seconds up to a maximum anaerobic metabolic contribution at about 2 minutes.^{[1] [2]} Any activity after 2-minutes or so, whether it be exceedingly easy or immensely intense, will have a large aerobic metabolic component.

Aerobic exercise, on the other hand, includes lower intensity activities performed for longer periods of time. Such activities like walking, running (including the training known as an interval workout), swimming, and cycling require a great deal of oxygen to generate the energy needed for prolonged exercise (i.e., aerobic energy expenditure).