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Anaerobic run: what did I do wrong?

His Dudeness

And a good day to you, sirs! A couple of days ago I had a n anaerobic run: 15' warm up in z2, 7 repetitions made of 1' all out and 3' recover in z1, 10' cool down in z2.

Expected benefit was 3.0 aerobic (high, I suppose) and 3.0 anaerobic.

I did as prescribed, running as fast as I could during those 1 minute splits. However, my activity was counted as low aerobic.

My question, to quote Scott Pilgrim, is: what did I do? What do I do? I'd want to learn eventual mistakes so that I can do the next anaerobic run more appropriately and get the expected results.

To understand better, I present you various images, including pace, heart rate, split average power (which was never below long (at worst) interval zone in those splits), my currently determined zones and training benefit.

I have three hypotheses, although I want to ask someone more experienced than me like you:

  1. The z2 parts were too long
  2. The all out parts were so short I couldn't reach z5
  3. In the recovery parts, I jogged lightly instead of walking or stopping. That means my HR fell down more slowly, and at the end of the three minutes I was still between z1 and z2, instead of fully being in z1. I was thinking that maybe more abrupt spikes, both up and down, could have led to more accentuated anaerobic benefit.

However, I shall specify that I was wearing a chest strap. It had some problems in the past because of which it measured lower HR than the actual value, but that seemed solved  a couple of weeks ago. 

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  • 0

    Edit: It came to my mind that, instead of single screenshots, it would be more useful to share my entire activity

  • 0
    His Dudeness said:
    what did I do? What do I do?

    Most probably either your Max HR or the LTHR are set too low. Heart Rate Zones do not matter. Garmin does not use them internally for the training effect metrics. It uses Max HR, LTHR, and Resting HR, so if those are wrong, the Training Effect, and most other performance metrics will be wrong too. Double check them, and if you are uncertain which value you should enter, do a field test (or a lab test). I also recommend using chest belt HRM, for higher accuracy.

  • +1 in reply to His Dudeness
    His Dudeness said:
    Edit: It came to my mind that, instead of single screenshots, it would be more useful to share my entire activity

    Yes, that's indeed helpful. If your zones are based on the Max HR or on LTHR, and are correct, then the intensity of your effort was simply too low to reach the anerobic threshold. Next time try harder, till your HR reaches HR Zone 5 during the interval.

  • 0 in reply to trux

    Oh, thanks. So my second hypothesis was mostly correct. I was not able to reach z5 during those single minutes, and that is the main problem. I swear I gave everything I had. I will get better at sustaining higher efforts with every activity of this type I'm gonna do, I suppose. Or maybe I should also do some leg muscle strength training. My aerobic fitness is probably better than my strength, so my legs don't allow me to go hard enough to really put my heart to the test.

  • 0 in reply to His Dudeness

    ... and if you struggle to reach higher HR even if you really give the max effort, then it very probably means your Max HR is set too high. As I wrote previously, do a field test (free), or a lab test at a physician, and adjust the value in Connect accordingly.

  • 0 in reply to trux

    I'm afraid the runs I did before realising my chest strap was faulty at the time distorted all calculations. It detected lower HR than real, so the algorithm probably overestimated my LTHR. After I did some activities without the strap and then apparently fixed it, it lowered my thresholds a couple of times, but maybe they are still too high. I will find an occasion after a run I have to do the test instead of the DSWs every day. 

  • 0 in reply to His Dudeness

    If you really gave all out, seeing your HR was maximally at 171 bpm only for a second or two, but otherwise only slightly above 160 bpm, I'd recommend setting the Max HR manually to ~164 bpm. Max HR is not the highest HR you ever achieved. You should be able to sustain the max HR for couple of tens of seconds. You can also check other high effort activities, and see how high the HR gets there.

  • 0 in reply to trux

    To be 100% honest, I started really hard to spike my HR, then estimated I couldn't sustain that effort for a whole minute and regulated it to get at the end of that interval without finding myself dramatically slowing down halfway there. Maybe I could have gone a bit harder, didn't feel confident I could manage it though, primarily muscle-wise. I should work on building confidence, there's surely some extra I can physically do but can't get to. Also, I must better understand my body's response to high intensity effort to estimate what I can actually do in sight of multiple repetitions.

  • 0 in reply to His Dudeness

    You do not need to train more to get accurate metrics. You just have to set the Max HR correctly. It looks like it is currently set to a value around 188-190 bpm, which seems to be clearly too high for you. Even if you make no Max HR test, disable the auto-detection, and set the Max HR to a value in the range 160-170 (depending on what you use to see at high effort activities). Once the Max HR is set correctly, the LTHR will be adjusted automatically. Keep the auto-detection of LTHR on, unless you know exactly its value.