First of all, your health is obviously of prime importance. If you have not engaged in intense physical exercise in the recent past, you must see a doctor to ensure you are healthy enough to begin an exercise plan.

Once you’ve done that, the next step is to determine your maximum heart rate. The best way to do this is to pick a steep hill that’s about 200m long and after a thorough warm up and while wearing your heart rate monitor, run up the hill 4 or 5 times and jog back down to the bottom before immediately starting your next repetition. Start at a moderate intensity and increase the pace with each repetition until the last rep which you run at your best possible effort. Check your monitor at the top of the last rep as soon as you stop running and take the highest value you see on your monitor. This is your maximum heart rate. You can do this test once every couple of months if you like, just to be sure you’ve got the right number. A couple of beats one way or the other doesn’t matter, but some people will learn to push themselves a little harder as they get further into a running program and you may find your actual maximum gets a little higher after a month of two of regular training.

One of the more hotly debated topics on running forums is the question of how fast to run on your easy days. These are the days when you’re not doing any specific workout, just going out on the roads or in the woods to cruise around and have a pleasant, comfortable run. My belief is that many runners run these days too fast. Running your easy days too fast can catch up to you in insidious ways. You may feel fine for a while, but over time begin to develop minor, nagging injuries that won’t go away. Or you may begin to feel a creeping exhaustion in your day to day life and  begin to develop some signs of overtraining, such as increased irritablilty, inability to sleep well, or colds and sniffles that won’t go away.

One of the best ways to avoid these problems is to limit the intensity of your easy days to 70-75% of your maximum heart rate. For many runners, especially those who have never trained at this intensity before, this will feel uncomfortably slow at first. If you stick with it for a couple of months, you will find that not only will it begin to feel more natural to run at this effort level, but you will also gradually be able to run faster while staying within the 70-75% range. Training at this intensity on your easy days will allow you to recover properly and be able to put the correct amount of effort into your hard days, without risking over-training, injury or burnout.

The second broad category of workout intensity is what I call tempo runs. These were popularized by Jack Daniels (the famous exercise physiologist and running coach, not the distiller). A tempo run is a run of 15 to 45 minutes at an intensity of 85-90% of maximum heart rate. Shorter tempo runs should be closer to 90%, while longer tempo runs will require a slightly slower pace. Also, less highly trained runners should aim for 85% and gradually increase the effort level as your fitness improves. The purpose of these runs is to improve your stamina, that is, your ability to hold a moderately fast pace over time. These runs should be ’comfortably hard’, it should be a challenging pace, but not so hard as you would run in a race of the same duration.

If you prefer, you can also break up these runs into 5-15 minute sections interspersed with a brief, active recovery such as a 1-2 minute jog. Daniels calls these “cruise intervals” and they are an effective complement to your standard tempo runs.

            Interval training     

 The third type of workout I recommend is called interval training. Interval training consists of running several repetitions at a high intesity with brief periods of rest or very easy jogging in between. The intensity for these reps is high, you should be hitting over 90% of maximum towards the end of each repetition. Early in the workout, you may not quite hit that intensity, but as the workout goes on and you get progressively more fatigued, you should be hitting 90 to 95% of your maximum. I don’t recommend going too much higher than 95% of your maximum heart rate as hitting over 95% of your maximum can lead to overtraining and can also limit the number of repetitions you can complete in the workout.
Here’s how a typical interval session of 10x400m with a 60 second rest would play out :

1)Warm up with at least 10 minutes of easy jogging. 2)Run 400m at 90 to 95% of maximum heart rate, rest ( ie. stand or walk around ) for 60 seconds, then run another 400m repeating the cycle until you’ve completed 10 repetitions of 400m. 3)Cool down with at least 5 minutes of easy jogging and some light stretching.

You can vary the distances run and the rest periods, longer repetitions will require longer rests and vice versa. The posible permutations and combinations of interval training that you can do is endless, and you should run a variety of distances from week to week. Longer reps will help your endurance, shorter reps will improve your speed.

I believe one or two interval workouts per week is the maximum anyone can safely run, as this is very high intensity training that will take your body a few days to a week to recover properly.

Ok, so now the question is how do you put it all together into a weekly training plan that covers all the bases without exposing you to an unreasonble risk of injury and burnout? Well, like everything in your training, ultimately it depends on the individual runner. My recommendation is to run no more than 2 higher intensity workouts ( interval training or tempo runs ) per week and to give yourself at least 2 days of easy running between higher intensity days. A typical week for me looks like this :

Mon- easy run ( 70-75% of maximum heart rate) or rest day

Tue- easy run (70-75%)

Wed- interval training (90-95% on the fast runs, with short easy jogging in between)

Thu- easy run (70-75%)

Fri- easy run (70-75%)

Sat- tempo run ( warm up with easy jogging at 65-70%, then 15-45 minutes at 85-90%)

Sun- longest run of the week, done at an easy intensity ( 70-75% of max)

Using the heart rate monitor to regulate the intensity of your training, you can get in the higher intensity training necessary for racing success, while ensuring you get the proper recovery between workouts to avoid injury and burnout.

I personally recommend Polar heart rate monitors, in my experience they have the longest life and greatest reliability. Timex heart rate monitors are the next best. You don’t need a lot of bells and whistles on your monitor, as long as it accurately records your heart rate and lets you know when you go out of your zone.