My goals for 2008 include winning my age group in the BC ultra series. In order to figure out my baseline, I recently did a tune-up and oil change at the doctor's office and an athletic performance test at the Peak Center.
The doctor said I would likely live to see another year. In follow-up to my lab rat experience, I met the other day with Mike McIvor at the Peak Centre to interpret the athletic performance results. I came away from our meeting a bit surprised. According to Mike, I'm mostly running too fast, but also running too slow.
It's still percolating through my brain, but I'm starting to see that training is like a layer cake. (I'll try to find a diagram to illustrate this, but for the time-being, picture a big, tall birthday cake with five (5) layers of chocolate cake separated by a thin layer of nutella!) To make this work, I'll replace the word "Layer" in the layer cake with "Zone". Each person's layers are different. Here are mine:
| Zone |
Heart Rate |
Comment |
| 5 |
169-175 |
puke zone (hold for a couple of minutes) |
| 4 |
162-168 |
a fast 10K pace (hold for 15 minutes or so) |
| 3 |
156-161 |
a solid 10K pace (hold up to an hour) |
| 2 |
145-155 |
a good trot (my typical training zone) |
| 1 |
125-144 |
a jog (go forever) |
My typical weekly runs include an hour of intervals with the Capilano Eagles, a 1-1.5 hour trail run midweek and a longer 2-5 hour trail run on the weekend. If I'm really lucky, I'll sneak in another hour during the week, but that's the exception, not the rule. I like to make the runs count, so I try to push most of the time. I know from wearing a heartrate monitor while training a couple of times last year that most of my training time is spent in Zone 2.
Apparently, I'm digging myself into a rut. Contrary to what I would have thought, I learned that by focusing on Zone 2, I'm training my my body to run slower, rather than faster!
In light of my goal of being the fastest in my age group at longer distances this year, Mike told me to forget all about Zones 2, 4 and 5. Zone 1 (slower than I like to run) should get 80-85% of my training time and Zone 3 (faster than I like to run) the rest.
I respect the science, even though it's not quite clear why it is so. I'm going to try and stick this out for 6 months and retest to see if anything has changed with my motor. Starting this evening at the Capilano Eagles, the heartrate monitor becomes my new best friend!
Comments
This actually makes sense to me now....
Good Summary
That's a good summary Ean.
I should make it clear that while this is the advice we gave you based on your testing results, everybody is different so depending on what one's zones look like and one's particular race distances and goals, the zones that are critical for improvement will vary. The advice we gave you definitely doesn't apply to everyone.
For you, with your race goals in the ultra distances and with an already well developed Zone 2, you should be spending your time in Zone 1 & Zone 3 because they target the thresholds that are holding you back right now. Since Zones 4 & 5 aren't currently limiting your ability to improve your ultra performances and you've already got a well developed Zone 2, you'll get the biggest performance improvements by spending your limited training hours focusing on Zone 1 and Zone 3 for the next 3 or 4 months. At that point it will be time to get you back in the lab to evaluate improvements and revaluate what type of training will get you the next set of performance improvements.
Generally speaking for endurance athletes Zone 2 is a kind of no mans land. Often, at least initially, Zone 1 will feel easy and Zone 3 always feels distinctly uncomfortable so many self-motivated athletes end up training Zone 2 the majority of the time. Zone 2 targets the wrong type of muscle fibre for improving aerobic fitness - it teaches you to accumulate higher levels of blood lactate at any given speed (and higher levels of lactate = higher fatigue). People who spend a lot of time training in Zone 2 may see some initial improvments as they learn to tolerate higher levels of lactate but they tend to hit a plateau in performance.
Training in Zone 1 targets your slow twitch muscle fibres and trains them to remove lactate. Less lactate = less fatigue. Less fatigue translates into going faster.
I hope that helps fill in a gap or two!
Good luck with your training! See you on the trails.
Cheers,
Mike McIvor
If you see me on the trails....
I'll buy you a beer if you catch me in anything other than Zone 1!
And we would accomplish that how....?
Not that I wouldn't appreciate a free beer, but I'm guessing the operative word here is "catch".
I know, we'll do random Heart Rate tests hidden along the trail, probably somewhere there's a nice speedy flat section that transitions to a steep rocky climb.
That should be a new CFA contest, "Keep Jackson Honest" If you can clock him at over 144 bpm you get a beer!
How close would we have to run togeter...
I wonder if radar guns could be modified...
We could track how fast you were going and get your heartrate at the same time.
I was zapped running through a speed trap during one of my hill sessions and the cops clocked me at 19km/hr.
I think that's the reason why I'm sterile.