Day 32: 5mi, 44:00 [Low HR Day 1]

I spent some time last night reading up on low HR training. Basically, the idea is to stay under aerobic threshold while training to improve aerobic capacity. While this is generally targeted at improving distance running times, the mile is roughly half aerobic, and I am persuaded by the arguments I have read that I will benefit as well in my mile quest. Plus, I was planning to ease off for a couple of weeks anyway. For more info on low HR training, check out this page and the links on it:
http://formationflier.spaces.live.com/

The low HR guys say you need to do only low HR runs for 12 weeks. I am not planning to stay with the program that long, but I reserve the right to stick with it if I see improvement. For the mile, however, I will have to bring back the intervals and high intensity runs at some point; that is inescapable.

So tonight, even though I don't have a heart rate monitor yet, I did the five mile test suggested here: http://www.rrca.org/resources/articles/slowdown.html In this run, you keep your HR under the aerobic threshold the whole time, adjusting your pace to do this. Then you record the mile times, and track this through the training program.

There are different formulas for the aerobic threshold HR. I used 185-43 [my age] which gives 142. Another formula uses 180-age, so I round it down to a target HR of 140bpm. I did not do much warmup prior to running, so took a while to get up to the HR. I started around 8:30 pace, moving gradually through 8:00 to about 7:30. My HR hit 141 around 1.25 miles in. I managed to keep it at that level by notching down the pace gradually until 2.50 miles, when my HR spiked to 151bpm. I had a hard time getting it back down. Had to back off all the way to ten minute miles, and took over a mile for my HR to fall, which it then did sharply. I picked up the pace again, the HR stayed around 130, before spiking back to 150. I managed to get it back down only at the end of the run. At t+1, my HR was 133, and at t+5, I was at 100. My mile splits:

mile 1: 8:15
mile 2: 7:50
mile 3: 8:35
mile 4: 10:00
mile 5: 9:20

It was a pain to have to use the handholds on the machine to get my HR. I don't fully trust it either, although I did check my pulse manually once, and the machine was about right. It should be easier once I get a wearable HR monitor.