Endurance Training - Second Mountain Hike

Endurance Training - Mountain Hike 2

Life always gets in the way of the best training intentions. This week a spur of the moment social outing and the Oktoberfest I'd forgotten I'd bought a ticket for added two alcoholic down-days.

There were some good training moments too-

• Monday saw the first training run. A quick track session for pace-checking tells me I can keep up 7minutes/km without going over 165bpm, making for a theoretical 5hr marathon
• On Wednesday a new personal best for 4km on the rowing machine. 

But today I managed to get out on the trails again, this time targeting the full Siu Ma Shan-Jardine's Lookout-Violet Hill-The Twins, or as I call it, the 5 peaks.

Analysis

When I saw the distance and time splits compared to last time (both 11km, 3hr30) I was a little disappointed, because I felt on fire on the trails. But considering there's three hundred meters or so of extra vertical in this route, this is quite the bigger achievement.

Trying to go for longer times is a bit of a pain when you're getting faster too. At the end today, I reached the goal destination and literally ran out of track - there are no sidewalks or trails running from the endpoint of the Twins.

The heartrate is a good story. Here's today's strip:

Versus last week's:

We're seeing much less deviance outside of the grey target band of 145-165. The exceedences especially are becoming shorter duration. My theory is these exceedences are what prove to be range-limiting, so catching and controlling these quickly is a priority.

But ignoring all the data, I feel fitter.

Trying out new things

I'd been wondering if people sell electrolyte tablets to take some of the bloat feeling out of drinking water, and on Friday while out shopping, I saw these on the counter:

I'm an instant fan. Today I didn't touch my electrolyte bottle at all. Just sipped from my water tank and sucked on these overpriced (30HKD for one small roll) salt tablets when things felt out of balance. Kind of a salt-lemon soda flavour. I don't feel anywhere near as tired or dehydrated as on the last run.

Where to next?

In the meantime, back to the gym, back on the rower, back on the exercycle. Running does not make my knees happy, and has limited motion and resistance. Next trail hike will need to go back to the park maps. The point of this exercise is to improve the amount of time that I can spend at 80-90% HR, and running out of track does not help extend this time. Chances are I'll plan for a north-to-south coast traverse of Hong Kong Island. The oceans are warm this year, so there might be one more end-of-run ocean swim left before the season changes.