Robert Nichols

I am a 72 year old race walker. Just recently I began using a race walking training program developed by Tim Seaman, a 2 time Race Walk Olympian. His program is based on percentage of your maximum heart rate. The majority of the training is accomplished by keeping your heart rate in the 70-75%. Periodically you get your heart rate in the 76-85% zone and other times in the 85-90% zone. None of the training is on a timed distance. Since I began using this technique my event time have been inproving. In March 2011 I place second in the 70-74 Age Group for the 3000m Race Walk at the National Masters Indoor T&F Championship held in Albuquerque, NM. On March 19, 2011, at a local meet, I completed a 1500m Race Walk competition with a PR of 9:17.0 (a 30 second improvement over the previous year). I believe my achieved are the the result of the heart rate based training program. I am also seeing an improvement in my recovery heart rate aft! er exercise period - I my heart rate has dropped by less than 20 beats in 1 minute I know I have pushed too hard and need to ease up during the next workout.