AUDIO ONLY - 313: Types of Zone Training
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[00:00:00] This is the Real Life Runners Podcast, episode number 313 types of zone training. All right, so today on the podcast we are getting into some of the nitty gritty. If you caught last week's podcast, episode number 312, we talked about a lot of the big rocks and the keep it simple principle, okay? Because a lot of times we can get very, allow ourselves to get very confused by all the different ways to train out there.
[00:00:54] Angie: So if you saw the name of this, Podcast episode, you know that we're gonna go into the [00:01:00] different types of zone training, and there's a lot of different methods out there, and we're gonna hit the major ones in this episode today, we're gonna break down those different zone training methods for you, because I think a lot of times we hear about these different training zone methods and lactate and VO two max and power zones and heart rate zones, and we're like, what in the world?
Are we supposed to do? So today we wanna clarify all of these different systems for you so that you don't have to feel confused or overwhelmed and make that hinder your progress. Yeah,
[00:01:33] Kevin: Tran, hopefully, I mean that, that is the goal here, is to provide as much clarity as possible, but also how to use them and why you don't need to use them, why you would use them.
Mm-hmm. Like the benefits, the pros and cons in here of what would you actually do with it, and whether you need to even know anything about that particular
[00:01:51] Angie: training method. Right. And so if you feel overwhelmed after listening to this episode, go back and listen to three 12. Okay. Three [00:02:00] 12 is the keep it simple principle.
It's what you need to know. It's the basics. It's the foundation. You need to be doing those things that we talked about in that episode before you even start to worry too much about all of the details. In this episode, we're going to be reiterating some of the stuff that we covered last time, cuz we did talk about effort level training last week, and we are gonna be talking about effort level training this week.
But all of the numbers and things that we're gonna get into this week are not as important. If you don't have those big rocks in place, like we talked about last week with mindset, your basic effort level running in one, like three different zones, your recovery, your nutrition, your strength, training in your mobility, okay.
If you don't have those pieces in place, you don't need to dive into all of the nitty-gritty details in this episode.
[00:02:50] Kevin: Yeah, that's excellent. Excellent way of looking at it. And so, yeah, go back to three 12. If you haven't done three 12 yet, honestly, you might wanna start with, with three 12. Yes. Pause this and try that one first.
[00:03:00] There's a reason. Mm-hmm. We went in this order. This one can, can come off as a lot, because most of what it is is that one aspect of three 12 where we're talking about effort level training. This is just a lot of different ways to mm-hmm. To monitor
[00:03:12] Angie: your effort levels. Right. So our goal today is to help you.
Get rid of that confusion and that overwhelm. Because if you find yourself just uncertain about what all these systems are and how to use them and how they fit into your training and you're like, oh, maybe I should try this and maybe you should try this. It's kind of like the shiny object syndrome where you start doing one thing and then you hear about another thing and you're like, oh, that sounds better.
I should go do that. That's one of the big mistakes that a lot of runners make is just jumping from system to system and never really giving one system the time to work. So after you listen to this episode, choose which one sounds the best to you, you know, choose which one sounds the most beneficial, choose which one sounds the simplest to use or the most exciting for you to use.
Which one you kind [00:04:00] of feel like, yeah, that one sounds pretty cool. I wanna give that a try. Go for it, but then stick to it for at least 90 days to see how your body responds. I would argue maybe even six months. Yeah,
[00:04:12] Kevin: and I mean, it's not like there's, there's completely. There's different ways of measuring things is kind of what we're talking about in this episode.
Yeah. So part of it is, well if it, if it feels right in, in this way of looking at it, is then wrong. If I look at it from a different view and you know, it's one of the things I want to try and make sure we clarify today. Okay. So where do we start?
[00:04:30] Angie: Well, there's no right and wrong. I think we have, we start there.
Yeah. I think, good point. We start that there is no right and wrong. These are all just on a continuum of the amount of details that you want to put into your training.
[00:04:41] Kevin: Yeah. Which I think. That's a really good place is they're all on a continuum. So many of these systems are set up that it's like, well, I'm either exactly in this zone or I'm in that zone and if I train in this zone, I get these physical adaptations, and if I train in that zone, I get a different adaptation.
Yeah. And that's not exactly how your body works. Your body [00:05:00] doesn't really know the difference. We'll get into heart rate here. Like your body doesn't really say, oh, you're at 72% of your maximum heart rate. I'll do this, but as soon as you go to 73%, I'm gonna completely change what I'm doing. Right. Like, it's not that fine tuned, like your body's not, it just, it makes large adaptations.
[00:05:18] Angie: It's a continuum. Right. And so let's start out with the first type of training zone. And this is effort level training or rating of perceived exertion. And this is the one that we use the most with our athletes. We use, we kind of blend a lot of these to together and yes, we do in, in our real life runners method, but this is one of the, the primary ones that we use.
So, In effort level training, basically you ask yourself a question, how hard does this feel? On a scale of one to 10, how hard does this feel? Now there's, that is actually the modified rating of perceived exertion.
[00:05:56] Kevin: The original, I love the original, go ahead. It six through [00:06:00] 20. Yes. Which makes no sense at all.
Why would it start at
[00:06:03] Angie: six? I don't know. Well, I think that we were, we were looking into it one day and, and we think that it, it correlates to heart rate. I know, right?
[00:06:10] Kevin: But it's still ludicrous that it, the answer is, I, I guess it is better that they made it six through 20 rather than perceived exertion somewhere between 60 and 200.
Right. But all of the numbers on that one are, are silly. Yes. One through 10 is amazingly
[00:06:22] Angie: accurate though. Yeah. So the original scale is six through 20, but that's not what you'll usually see out in the world of coaching as much. You will sometimes still see that in scientific research studies. People will use that original scale, but most people use the modified scale, which is one through 10.
Um, and one of the big things that we often hear when we start to teach people this method when they come inside of the Real Life Runners Academy is people say, I don't know what that means. Like, I'm not sure. What a one's supposed to feel like. Well, I'm not sure what a five is supposed to feel like. And the funny thing is that [00:07:00] in the research, the research actually shows that people are pretty good and pretty consistent at picking their own effort levels, even if they aren't quite sure.
It's kind of the same thing as pain scales. Yeah. People always, when I was a, well, I am a physical therapist, but when I used to practice in the clinic and I used to ask people, what, what is the pain level? On a scale of one to 10? People are always like, I don't know. Well, that's such a hard question to answer.
Or I have a really high pain tolerance and it's my favorite one. Right. And okay, fine, but. So even if you do have a really high pain tolerance, that's fine. What is a one for you? What is a five for you? Because your five might be someone else's 10. Yes. But it's still consistent within your own body because it's your perceived level of pain.
So it's the same thing. Your perceived level of effort level or exertion
[00:07:50] Kevin: and effort levels are great when you are honest with yourself because they completely adjust for all the external conditions. If it's hotter, if it's colder, [00:08:00] if it's raining, snowing, the humidity, you got like a 30 mile an hour headwind in your face, you're running up a hill.
Effort level takes all that into account. Like if it's snowing and windy and you're running up a hill, you're not moving that fast and you're at an effort level of like, Eight out of 10 because you have all of these other things going on. Mm-hmm. You might even be walking, trudging your way up this hill and you're like, this is like an eight out of 10 effort.
Even though you're walking, it's able to take that into account. That's the glory of effort level. I think the trick is when people try to always connect a certain pace to a certain effort, like, oh, well, when I go easy, when I'm running at a two, I hold a 10 minute mile, and when I'm going at my medium pace, I hold an eight minute mile.
And they put these numbers as though they're fixed and that there aren't exterior con concerns.
[00:08:47] Angie: Yeah. That's a big question that we often get from our members as well. Mm-hmm. Like they'll say, well, what pace. Is, is my easy level, you know, like what is my easy effort? What pace should, [00:09:00] should that be? And there's ways to estimate this.
One of the common ways out there that people would recommend is take your 5K time, like your 5K racing time and add two to three minutes. But two to three minutes is a pretty big window, right? And it also depends on so many other factors like your life. What kind of stress level are you under? How has your sleep been?
Have you been fueling well? There's a lot of different things that play into your effort levels and how hard a run feels. And that's one of the positives of this system, is that it takes your real life into consideration because the rest of your life and your lifestyle and everything that's going on outside of running affects how you feel when you're out.
On a run. And so effort levels take all of that in con into consideration. Whereas if you have a very set pace where you're saying, okay, well my easy pace is between a 10 and a 10 30, but you are just, [00:10:00] you know, buried under work commitments, your family life is stressful, you haven't been getting sleep, you're not eating enough food, that 10 to 10 30 pace might feel much harder.
Like your easy pace on that day might be like a 12 minute pace because of everything else that's going on in your life. And so that's one of the benefits of using effort level over these specified paces because you can make sure that an easy day is actually easy so that you're not just, okay, well my easy pace zone, my easy pace range is 10 to 10 30, but that really feels hard.
That's now in the moderate level. Yep. Of training. And so now you're, That you're, you're over training if you're running most of your mileage in that pace range, because it feels much harder. So your body does not know pace, your body doesn't know I'm running at a 10 minute pace. Your body only knows I'm running easy, I'm running medium, or I'm running hard, or you know, some, like somewhere on the scale of one to [00:11:00] 10 within
[00:11:00] Kevin: that range.
Right. And so when you use the the R p E, this, this effort, level one through 10, most of your runs should be quite easy. We generally prescribe somewhere in that, that zone, that level two, which two outta 10, which is above one. Like one for most people it, for most people, one is walking. For really, really fast people.
One maybe super slow jogging and then they, there is actually like level zero training, but for most people one is, is walking because it's what you would do if like, you were doing like a really hard workout and you wanted to have a very easy recovery between hard sessions. Like you're doing really hard 200 meter repeats on a track and you want a really slow recovery in between.
For almost everybody, the most optimal way to recover right there is walking. Mm-hmm. If you're at like an Olympic caliber, you're gonna do some really easy jogging there. It's gonna be like some shuffling. Yes. Yeah. But for most people it's gonna be more [00:12:00] efficient for you to walk than to slow shuffle.
Right. Exactly. Um, I think one of the other tricky parts is at the other end of this, oh wait, I forgot my, my point there. So most peop, most of your runs should be easy. You should do a little bit of your running in the middle somewhere in that four five, maybe six four to six six. We'll talk about that as we keep going.
Mm-hmm. And then some of it should be towards the top, but not very much. So most easy. Uh, some in the middle and then just a little bit up at the
[00:12:25] Angie: top. Right. So that begs the question then if you're doing some easy, a little bit medium and then a little bit hard. That sounds like three zones and not 10.
Yeah.
[00:12:34] Kevin: Which we'll get into of the, the nuance of what is the difference between one and two, two and three. Mm-hmm. Where does it cut off between easy and medium? Cuz it makes the most sense to just divide it into third. So 1, 2, 3, all goes into easy, right? 4, 5, 6 can go into the medium and then I get like an extra one.
I get 10 at the, at the upper
[00:12:53] Angie: level, seven through 10. Yeah. And if you are in inside of our academy, if you are one of our academy members, we go through [00:13:00] every single one of these effort levels in detail of what does a level one feel like? How do you know if you're at a level three, a level six? Like what's the difference between all of these effort levels?
What things you notice in your body at all of those effort levels? So if you are an academy member, you can head into the members area and watch that lesson. If you are curious about how to specifically. Know the difference between all of these individual levels, but for most of us, like we said in last week's episode, you have to know the three main ones is easy, medium, and hard.
Do most of your running easy? Do some of your running at a medium or moderate effort level, and then do a little bit
hard,
[00:13:36] Kevin: right? And then so many of these other topics that we're gonna cover today, Try and put some sort of number that you don't, it's not intuitive. It's not like a feeling of, of your effort level and try to break down the zones into, I don't know, essentially other ways of categorizing things.
What do you mean? Well, like the next topic that I wanted to cover is time to failure. Mm-hmm. This is essentially labeling your effort levels. [00:14:00] It's saying, okay, how, what would the pace be that you could run, if you had to run for an hour, what would the pace be? If you had to run for 10 minutes and you know, the speed that you would go if you only have to last 10 minutes is way different than I said.
All right. I want you to go as hard as you can for an hour. You're gonna sort of moderate your pace on that one. I'm like, okay, I'd like you to be able to last for six hours. What's the answer to that? For most people walking is the answer to that. Maybe a combination of a walk, walking, run, walk. Yes. A run walk.
Right. But if. If you fall into the category of, well, this is supposed to be easy because the, the difference between the, the effort levels and when people try and start categorizing it with time to failure, the how long can you do this pace before you cannot keep it up easy, which is essentially efforts one through three falls into the thing of something that you could do for hours and hours.
Which leads to your question of what can I, what would that be if I can't go more than 30 minutes without having to walk? And the answer is, well run, walking. [00:15:00] Mm-hmm. Is your easy effort, which is why run walking is so beneficial for so many, many people.
[00:15:06] Angie: So what would you consider. Easy. Then you said hours and hours.
Yep. Is that like two hours, four hours, six hours? Like what does that mean? That's the difference
[00:15:16] Kevin: between one and three. So one is something that you could literally do all day long, which is why one is for like 12 hours. Yeah. Which is why one is walking, walking for most people. Yeah. Like it's, it's six plus.
I've seen people put it as like 10 hour effort levels. Mm-hmm. But there are people that are run walking a marathon in six hours. Mm-hmm. So, Then in that case, that somewhere in that one to two range is, is a, a moderate, uh, like a, a comfortable run walk balance. Okay. But level one for, again, most pe almost everybody, level one is just walking.
Okay. Because it's something that you do for all day long that you could actually continue to, to hold that
[00:15:51] Angie: effort. Okay. So effort levels one through three is basically anything under like two and a half hour or anything over like what, three [00:16:00] hours? Yeah, three. Three-ish hours. Okay. So like a level three would be three hours?
Yep. A level two would be somewhere between like four and six hours. Yep. And a level one would be like six
[00:16:08] Kevin: plus hours. Right. So then you can take that and. Kind of start thinking like, oh wait, it's somewhere in my marathon pace might be somewhere into that. The category.
[00:16:19] Angie: Well that's why marathon pace is often like a level three, four, but it
[00:16:22] Kevin: depends like how fast are you running your marathon?
Right. You know, cuz the next time here is somewhere in that two to two and a half hours is essentially levels three and four. Which if you're an elite level runner, two to two and a half hours is marathon pace. Mm-hmm. But not for most of us, like for most of us that two to two and a half hours is sub marathon pace.
Mm-hmm. Which means marathon pace is no longer easy effort. It might be marathon might be easy effort if you're completing a marathon in four or five hours. Marathon pace, if you're completing marathon in three hours is right on the cusp of easy [00:17:00] to moderate. Okay.
[00:17:00] Angie: So in, in this time to fail your model.
Mm-hmm. For most people that do a marathon in over three hours. Yep. That's a level two.
[00:17:12] Kevin: That's a level probably. Yeah. Two. Two to
[00:17:14] Angie: three. Two to three. Yep. Depending on if you're like at the four hour mark or like
[00:17:18] Kevin: five to six hour mark. Exactly. Okay. And then so three and four, then where you start moving from easy into medium pace.
This is, this is, you're supposed like, um, level three or four. So if you've ever looked up a plan on the internet and they've got workouts on there that are called marathon pace workouts. Here's the thing. Most of those workouts are designed for elites. Mm-hmm. Not for people that are running the marathon in five hours.
So if you're like, well my goal is to break five hours in the marathon, how fast do I do my marathon pace workout? You do it at something that you could sustain for two to two and a half hours, which is way faster than marathon pace cuz that plan was designed for [00:18:00] someone who's running a marathon in two and a half
[00:18:01] Angie: hours.
Oh, that's interesting. Yep. So what you're saying is that marathon pace is not actually marathon pace. It's exactly what I'm saying for most people According to this model. According to this model. Okay. And, and, and start to keep this in mind you guys, because this is why the fun of all
[00:18:17] Kevin: the different
[00:18:17] Angie: models.
My, my brain is already starting to get a little wonky here because we have, what we have to remember here is what we're telling you is not tried and true hard facts. This is the way it is. This is what this model, the time to failure model, that's how these paces are, or these effort levels are, uh,
[00:18:37] Kevin: estimated.
Right? And the time to failure stuff is based off of, as most things are, is based off of elite athletes. Right?
[00:18:44] Angie: And so, and that's, that's the thing with all of these things, yes, except effort level training,
[00:18:49] Kevin: except effort level training, which is why that's
[00:18:50] Angie: the one that we stick with, which is why we love effort level training so much is that so much of this is based off of elite runners or elite cyclists, elite athletes, [00:19:00] right?
Yes. And. Like you were just saying about the podcast that you have been listening to recently, um, one of the other podcasts is that elite athletes oftentimes have very unique physical advantages over the rest of the population. Yes. So how accurate is it to take what an elite athlete can do and just kind of water it down for a recreational
[00:19:24] Kevin: runner?
I mean, that's, that's one of the huge things. It was like a little aspect that they had in their podcast. Yeah. But that was the biggest takeaway I had out of that is essentially normal everyday runners are not just slower versions of elite athletes. Right. Elite athletes have something else to them.
Mm-hmm. Sometimes it's a mental thing that they have that other people can't. It's, it's sometimes the physical thing that they have that other people can't. It's likely both and yes, it's all likely both.
[00:19:48] Angie: Let's, let's be honest, like the difference between elite athletes. Yep. Professional athletes and recreational athletes is both, they have a physical advantage and a mental [00:20:00] advantage.
[00:20:00] Kevin: Right. So when you, when you're looking at these things and we're like, oh, well, you should spend like 80% of your time here and then 15% of your time here and 5% of your time here. Okay. That works for someone who already has the physiology of an Olympic caliber athlete. They don't need to spend all that much time in the higher zone.
Mm-hmm. Because they could take three weeks off, show up, up at the track and be like, oh, we're doing 200 meter repeats today. I guess I'll do them in 26. Right. Like, that's not what most people are doing. It's not, it's not
[00:20:30] Angie: what most people
[00:20:30] Kevin: are capable of. Right. And they're capable of, most people would get hurt.
Right. They're capable of casually doing it. Right. So they don't have to work on their higher end speed because it's so innate to them. Yeah.
[00:20:40] Angie: So it's like that one 800 meter runner, what was his name? Nick? Nick something Simmons. Yeah. Him, like, he could just put himself in a place, in a bad place. Yeah. In a, in, well in a bad place, but just, uh, He could, the amount of pain that he could withstand during competition was above and beyond
[00:20:57] Kevin: everyone else.
I, I mean, I, I I say bad place. Yeah. I [00:21:00] think he actually referred to it as he could live in the dark place for 800 meters. Mm-hmm. Which means he didn't have to practice it during practice. Yeah. He was notoriously getting his butt handed to him by teammates in practice, and then they would show up at races, early season races.
He would killing, he would not do well late season races. Suddenly it's the championships and he would be able go to a place that other people couldn't. Yep. And it was like, where, how did that happen? Mm-hmm. Because he has the physiology that he didn't need to kill himself in practice, and then he just had to flip the switch to go to that mental place.
Yeah. Where it's like, I can do this. Are you capable of going there because I can live there for the next minute and 40 seconds. Exactly.
[00:21:38] Angie: Exactly. All right. So we've talked so in, in this time to failure model. Yep. They still use. Effort level one through 10. Yeah. Okay, so, so make sure that that's not, here's the thing, comprising
[00:21:50] Kevin: you either.
Here's trying to blend different methods together. Yeah. There was, well we're not
[00:21:54] Angie: supposed to be blending, we're supposed to be just kind of helping
[00:21:56] Kevin: to explain. Right. But this is how all the different ways of looking at it [00:22:00] all kind of overlap each other. True. Okay. Because you can use any of them, they really do all overlap on top of each other,
[00:22:06] Angie: but like on time to failure, like if this was like the model that you were following, sure.
Would it, it say one hour pace, would it say two to two and a half hour? No, that would just say marathon pace, right? Yeah. Marathon pace. Marathon pace. And that just is equivalent to a pace that you could hold for two to two and a half hours? Yes. Okay. So. All right, so that's what we just covered. Marathon pace is essentially level three to four in effort level training.
Okay. Now we go on to one hour pace, which is also known as tempo pace or threshold pace, depending on the source of the information, right? Depending
[00:22:38] Kevin: on how old your coach is, they may or, or how much they wanna keep up with like the cool, trendy, new words to speak, right? They may call it tempo pace. They may call it threshold.
Personally, I call this tempo pace because my first training book was uh, Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels, so I went with that one. Yep. And that's what he referred to this as tempo training. But the cool new term, all [00:23:00] the cool kids are calling this threshold training now. Mm-hmm. Because this is right at the threshold of w We'll get into on the, on the layer thing.
This is it, right at your lactate threshold level, your second lactate threshold level,
[00:23:11] Angie: actually. So it's a pace that you can hold for about an
[00:23:13] Kevin: hour. Yes. That's, that's the big takeaway is this is what you could hold for an hour, which is probably the most physically difficult thing that you could try and do, is tell somebody I'd like you to figure out exactly how fast you can run at a perfectly even pace and do it for the next hour.
[00:23:29] Angie: See, that's why I never liked it.
[00:23:31] Kevin: Well, in
[00:23:32] Angie: you tried to convince me it was the best one.
[00:23:35] Kevin: It's cuz it's, it's
[00:23:36] Angie: phenomenal. I mean, it's very beneficial for you physiologically and mentally. It's, it's both physically and mentally beneficial.
[00:23:42] Kevin: It is very difficult. But the, the key thing on this one and so much new, uh, training studies and, and, and coaching studies are coming out on this one, that the key on hitting this is making sure that you don't accidentally push too fast.
That's the biggest thing in threshold [00:24:00] training. That's the term that's out now is threshold training, which is level five, is you wanna make sure that you don't accidentally jump beyond level five. Okay. That you want, if, if, and doubt six is no bueno, six is, is no longer getting the same level. You don't wanna push beyond it.
You want to be like, oh, okay. Level five, something that I could hold for a full hour. So, um, if you can run a 10 K in, say 50 minutes, that's not your level five. Right? That's just a little bit too fast, that's faster and being like, oh, well it's close to an hour. No, you're now probably going just a little bit beyond.
The goal is to keep this at a, a comfortably difficult effort. Comfortably uncomfortable, comfortably uncomfortable,
[00:24:45] Angie: un or uncomfortably comfortable. No. It's comfortably
[00:24:48] Kevin: uncomfortable. The, the key is the comfort side of it. It does not feel that hard. It doesn't, it doesn't feel good, but if you're doing it correctly Yeah.
And so many times when, when we say that you're gonna be able to hold this for an [00:25:00] hour, the workout is not, go run this for an hour. Right? The workout is run this for 20 minutes. The workout is run this for 10 minutes, take a break, and then repeat that three times. You're doing chunks of time at this.
Maybe you can extend it and do it for, um, up to 20, maybe 25 minutes. But you don't push the time that long and none of it is that bad because you're stopping so far before you reach that point of failure. Right. Because point of failure is at an hour, you're, you're stopping at 20 minutes.
[00:25:29] Angie: Yeah. I mean, doing a, a tempo run or a threshold run, it does not feel that hard.
Right. Like it should not feel that hard. It should just require focus for you to maintain that effort level.
[00:25:39] Kevin: Yes. Or that pace. Yeah. All right, so then in time to failure, we kind of skip over level six because the next good time that, that time to failure coaches go with is what can you hold for 20 minutes, which is level seven.
[00:25:53] Angie: So that's a big, like they just forgot 40 minutes of, of
[00:25:56] Kevin: your time. Yes. So there's what you can hold for an [00:26:00] hour and then what you can hold for somewhere in the 15 to 20 minutes. This is, it's kind of a gray area. It really does depend on which coach you're talking to. Yeah. And again, here's the interesting part is some coaches are talking around 15 minutes.
That's 5K pace. That's 5K pace for elites. That's 5K pace for who the training method was based off of. Right? It's 5K pace for, for when, with the same way that two and a half hours is marathon pace, 15 minutes is 5K
[00:26:27] Angie: pace. Okay. So what if you run a 5K in 30
[00:26:29] Kevin: minutes? All right, so level seven is. How fast you could go for 15 to 20 minutes.
So if you're running a 5K in 30 minutes, level seven is faster than that. Okay.
[00:26:42] Angie: So a 5K pace would then be like a level six. Yes. Basically for, yes. Like if you're running a 5k. Racing a 5K in 30 minutes. Yes. That's probably a level six
[00:26:53] Kevin: according to this model on that fits into the time to failure model.
Yes. Okay. Level seven is about
[00:26:57] Angie: 15. Yeah, so level six is anything between like 20 [00:27:00] minutes and an hour. Yes.
[00:27:01] Kevin: Which is a wide range. The very wide range and the, the thing is that that starts moving you into speed play, which is like, okay, so I'm gonna go fast today, and that's how fast I could go if I was racing for 30 minutes.
Mm-hmm. Well, if that's your 5K pace, then yes. That's fast. So that's, that's great. Okay. Okay. Level eight is about 10 minutes, somewhere between seven and 10 minutes that you could hold. Mm-hmm. Okay. Which, depending on who you are, that's a wide range of distances. Yeah. And then level 10 is what you could hold for seven to 10 seconds.
Yeah. That's a big jump. It is between level eight and level 10. Right. Okay. In time to failure, it gets all the way and it categorizes level 10 as I could do this for. Maybe 10 seconds, but probably even less than that. Mm-hmm.
[00:27:49] Angie: Yeah. So we're talking a hundred meters or less. Probably less. Cause cuz elites run it in 10 seconds.
Yeah. Like elite professional Olympic athletes
[00:27:58] Kevin: Yes. Run it. But you're looking [00:28:00] at like what could elite distance runners do? I understand. So 10 seconds is, so it's 50 meters. Yeah. Like, cuz it's seven to 10 seconds. Yeah. So seven seconds on an, it's an all out sprint. It's in basically an all out, it's an all out sprint.
Yes. A level 10 is an all out sprint on, on radio perceived exertion. At least the way that we talk about it inside the academy. I never really think that 10 is an absolute all-out sprint. I suggested it's what you could hold for 400 meters. Mm-hmm. Which is not an all
[00:28:23] Angie: out sprint. Right. And so again, this shows you guys that there is nuance here.
There is again a continuum. If you spoke to 10 different coaches that coach. By the time to fail your model, you might get 10 different answers.
[00:28:38] Kevin: Oh, a hundred percent. They're all gonna going to agree that one hour pace is level five, but you go a little bit above it and a little bit below it, and there's gonna be a whole lot of disagreement.
Yeah. Level five is an hour, and everything else has a question mark to it. All
[00:28:50] Angie: right. If your brain's not fried yet, it's time to start Heart rate training, heart rate training, and the five zone heart rate training
[00:28:58] Kevin: model. Yeah, which is [00:29:00] fantastic. It is. Because it has hard numbers put
[00:29:02] Angie: into it. Well this one, and this is the one that we get the most questions about.
Yes. Quite honestly, like most people ask about heart rate, most people ask how heart rate correlates to effort levels, since that's the one that we use the most. Yep. So people are like, well, you want me to be at an effort level five. What is my heart rate zone for that? They try to com, you know, kind of, um, correlate the heart rate zone and the effort level zones, and they are related.
Yep. Okay. So that is one thing that is true. They definitely are related, but they're not, it's not, again, it's not black and white. There's a lot of gray here.
[00:29:33] Kevin: Right. And a lot of, uh, smart watches will tell you your heart rate zone, right. You'll tell you exactly where you are, and then you really have to figure out like, what does that mean and how accurate is it?
Mm-hmm. So in theory, if your watch was perfectly accurate and, and you calculated your upper heart rate zone or more, ideally you calculated your heart rate at threshold pace. Mm-hmm. Then you could figure out everything else and you wouldn't have to think at all. You just use your
[00:29:57] Angie: watch. Okay. But what you just [00:30:00] said there contained multiple issues with, I think it had like three,
[00:30:04] Kevin: three ifs in there.
Yeah.
[00:30:05] Angie: Well, and yeah, multiple areas of error too, because one of the big negatives here is that most people when they are trying to do heart rate zones use their watch because most of the smart watches now have heart rate on your wrist and. Wrist based heart rate monitors are not that accurate. They're becoming more and more accurate every, with every addition that they, you know, release.
But the chest strap is the most accurate monitor of your heart rate. And most people aren't running with a chest strap. Some people are right, but the watch is not super accurate. They oftentimes, like if you go on the manufacturer's website, it'll be plus or minus 10 beats per minute, which is a huge number if, especially if you're trying to train in a very specific heart rate zone.
Uhhuh, right? Because if your easy heart rate say, is one 40 and. Your watch is saying one 40, but you're actually running a [00:31:00] one 50. Yep. Then all of a sudden you're in a totally different zone.
[00:31:03] Kevin: Right. So it easy, my zone three on Garmin is less than 10 beats wide. Yeah. So if it's plus or minus 10, I could actually be in zone two, three, or four mm.
Depending on the air. That's so
[00:31:15] Angie: interesting. And that's, that's it, is that these heart rate zones also bleed into each other. Again, it's a continuum. It's not hard and fast. There's not like one hard barrier at a certain heart rate, so that you know. At 1 54, you're in the easy zone and at 1 55 you're in the lactate zone.
And if you, you know, go from one to the other, all of a sudden your body's getting totally different benefits. That's not the way it
[00:31:38] Kevin: works. Right. And so the, the best way to do this is to figure out your heart rate at different thresholds, not necessarily your maximum heart rate, or you can use the difference between your maximum and your resting heart rate.
That's slightly
[00:31:51] Angie: more accurate also. Right. So that's one of the other errors that you mentioned earlier. Yep. That of, of this, me using this method is that most people [00:32:00] don't know their maximum heart rate because a lot of people use the calculation. A lot of the, the default, um, formulas on the watch or in your app is 220 minus your age.
And that is not super accurate for most fit people. Right. Like it's. Is it accurate enough for the general population? Sure. Yes. Do doctors still use it? Yes, they do. Totally. But we also have to realize that we as runners are not the general population. Right. It's something like what over 60% of the US population is now overweight or obese, right?
Right. And are there overweight and obese runners? Absolutely that, but I. Even if you are an overweight or obese runner, you are, you have a different fitness level than an overweight or obese person that is sedentary, right?
[00:32:48] Kevin: So, and the two 20 minus age does not work as well for athletes, which is weird because it's the athletes that are using it so much, right?
[00:32:55] Angie: It's athlete again, that's why I say like fit people or athletes, right? So, um, the one that [00:33:00] you were talking about was the H R V model, which is where you take your heart rate max and then your resting heart rate, and then you plug those two into a formula. It's also called the Carin method, okay? That begins with a K, if you guys wanna Google it.
K A r o v e n. I think Carin. Well, whatever Carin method, it begins with a K K for sure. Um, and that's a more accurate way to estimate your heart rate zones. Um, for sure. And that actually is one of the options inside of the Garmin Connect app. So if you go in there, you can actually change the way that Garmin gives you your training zones.
Yep. Because they, cuz Garmin does give you a five zone training method based on heart rate and you can change, um, your heart rate max in there and everything
[00:33:45] Kevin: too. But you can also just do a max heart rate test. They're just incredibly painful to do. They are. Um, so because one of the issues is you have to hold your max heart rate for long enough that the watch is gonna be able to pick it up.
And the biggest issue [00:34:00] I think with heart rate training is there's a lag. Mm-hmm. There's always a lag. Like if I start off sprinting up a hill, I'm going to be able to get to my maximum heart rate, but, I may get exhausted in my legs before I reach maximum heart rate. Yeah. Like my legs may be like, all right, we are going to walk before my heart rate gets there because my heart rate doesn't immediately respond to my effort level.
Mm-hmm. Like, just because I'm sprinting up a steep hill does not mean my heart rate immediately jumps from resting to, uh, one 90, whatever. It's gonna show up as. You're probably
[00:34:33] Angie: over
[00:34:33] Kevin: 200. No, I don't think I am, but
[00:34:35] Angie: okay. We'll see. Okay. Mine, uh, mine is definitely, well, I shouldn't say definitely. I haven't done it in based off maybe a couple years, but I've plus or minus 10 I've two or two.
Oh five plus or minus 10. Yeah, exactly. Um, within the last couple of years.
[00:34:48] Kevin: So, yeah. So that to me is one of the biggest issues with heart rate is that lag between when you start go doing a certain pace and how fast your heart rate says that you're doing that. It gets the most tricky at the highest [00:35:00] paces because if you're doing zone five training in heart rate, there's only five zones.
Yeah. They take one through 10, divide by two in the fastest stuff. You're not holding that, that, uh, speed for all that long. And it's gonna take a while for your heart rate to catch up to how fast you're actually going. Right. So if you're only supposed to be going that fast for 30 seconds, but it takes you 20 seconds for your heart rate to catch up to it, now suddenly you're going for almost a minute because it took so long for your heart rate to realize that you were trying that effort level.
[00:35:30] Angie: Yeah, that's true. So, well, and the other thing too about this is, and some people might argue with me on this, right? Okay, let's see what you got. But I think that. There are people that just have higher heart rates than other people. Yes. Like I have a friend that I run with a lot, and when we go out on the same run together, holding the same pace, we're both holding conversations with each other.
Yep. But her heart rate is much lower than mine. Yep. So I just tend to have a [00:36:00] higher heart rate than a lot of people. And it's funny because there are, you know, I, I don't know if it's just my tolerance to. What have, you know, having what a high heart rate feels like. Cuz I know I've talked to her before.
Mm-hmm. And she said, anytime I start to get my heart rate up above a certain number, like I can feel it and I, I have to slow down. Like I, I can't, I can't keep pushing at that level. Mm-hmm. Whereas I'll run my entire like half marathon at like 1 70, 180 Yeah. Heart rate. And I think that there's a lot of people that just have a naturally higher heart rate and can sustain that for a long period of time.
[00:36:34] Kevin: I think as we'll get to in a couple of, of methods here, I think it has to do with your heart rate level and what your lactate levels are. Yeah. Because it doesn't match perfectly with some people. It doesn't always match. Yeah. Some people are like, oh, if my heart rate goes to here, then it, it's not that if you hit zone four that your lactate automatically responds.
Mm. You probably have a different, I can process lactate faster. That's what I was gonna say. You have a more efficient lactate shuttle way to go.
[00:36:58] Angie: But my heart [00:37:00] rate, it doesn't. Like it, it doesn't correlate with my heart rate level.
[00:37:03] Kevin: Yes. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. Which is why heart rate training would not make much sense for you.
[00:37:06] Angie: Exactly. And so if you are someone that just notices that, you know, you have a high heart rate, but you still feel okay, like I get this question all the time, both from our clients, just from random people on Instagram, like, you know, it says that my easy heart rate should be from here to here, but I can still maintain a conversation and I feel fine when I'm at this level and I feel like I can just keep running and it's not a problem.
I'm, and I say, I don't, I'd still, I'd go by that. Like as long as you're being honest with yourself. Mm-hmm. I would go by effort level versus heart rate. So I think it's more
[00:37:34] Kevin: accurate. The way to fix that is to figure out what your heart rate is at lactate threshold level, and then figure out all of your other zones based off of that.
Right? Instead of figuring out your max heart rate, instead of figuring your max, you've to do like a double test and, and both figure out your lactate threshold. Mm-hmm. How fast you can go at that. Or you can figure out your speed as you, I mean, it's the same number, so it's your speed as you move into VO two max.
Mm-hmm. What is that? [00:38:00] And then base all your zones off of that uhhuh and suddenly you're gonna be like, oh, I can run way faster than I thought that I could.
[00:38:05] Angie: Okay. So that we can talk about that more in the lactates. Model.
[00:38:09] Kevin: Yep. Okay. All right. So in heart rate, let's throw some numbers at this zone one and zone two, which now suggests like level one through four all fall into easy.
[00:38:19] Angie: What do you mean one? Oh, for effort levels. For effort levels. All right, so right now we're talking about a five zone heart rate model. Yep. All right. So effort levels one through four? Yeah. Would be in zones one and two?
[00:38:30] Kevin: Yes. Okay. Which is anything less than, and this is my favorite because we just spent so much time talking about the, like inaccuracies and not precision.
It's anything less than 72% of your maximum heart rate. Right?
[00:38:41] Angie: So if your maximum heart rate is inaccurate and you're trying to calculate 72% of that, like what is the
[00:38:47] Kevin: error rate there? Yeah, it's, it's an issue, but if everything is super accurate, there's, there's been plenty of research done in this. Yeah.
It's not necessarily where people are spending a lot of current research time, but there was a lot of of [00:39:00] studies done that there were substantial changes at 72% of maximum heart rate when it was actually calculated correctly. Okay. So easy as anything in that which can actually get way faster than you might think.
Mm-hmm.
[00:39:12] Angie: Yeah. Because we would put zone four in medium, yes. In like in the effort level. Yes.
[00:39:17] Kevin: Training and zone three is this very tight window of 72 to 80% of your maximum max heart rate of your max heart rate. In, in our like real life runners framework of this thing, we call this steady state. So here's the thing is zones one through five in heart rate training, I don't think perfectly match up to zones one through 10 the way that we talk about it, right?
Because
[00:39:43] Angie: steady state for us is effort level three as effort
[00:39:45] Kevin: level 3, 3, 4, and that's where zone three is. Yeah, that doesn't match exactly. So the numbers when you're doing heart rate, are a little funky. It's this very tight window. We call it steady state. It's somewhere in that three to four and it go, [00:40:00] it's, it's both three and four because zone four in heart rate training is the very tight range of 80 to 85% of maximum, which is threshold training, which is level five, which is level five on a, on a zone one
[00:40:15] Angie: through 10.
Right. So this is interesting, right? Because zones one through four are all effort levels are are effort levels one through five. So anything above, uh, A level five Yes. Is a zone
[00:40:28] Kevin: five. Yes. Interesting. Which is gonna be,
[00:40:31] Angie: yes. So that's anything above 85% of your
[00:40:34] Kevin: maximum heart rate, which is above your threshold level.
And as we covered in the time to failure, that's how far you, how fast you would be going if you were able to run for a full hour uhhuh, which is not that
[00:40:47] Angie: fast, right? So anything that you're running under an hour is all considered zone
[00:40:51] Kevin: five. Right. So in heart rate training, and this is not entirely a bad way of looking at it.
Yeah. 10 K training is speed training. [00:41:00] Is zone five. Is zone five. Okay. Okay. Zone five is a huge amount of room. Yeah, it's anything above 85%. Okay. It slides into what's considered VO two max training, which is the speed that you're training when you are taking in as much oxygen as you possibly can.
There's like a level where you just can't take in and process oxygen any faster. It's your VO two max and it goes all the way up through all that
[00:41:23] Angie: sprinting. Okay. So in this model of the heart rate zones one through five, how would you break up your training? Because we, before we said easy, medium, and hard.
Yep. Most of your time and easy, blah, blah, blah. How would you break it up in
[00:41:37] Kevin: here? Okay, so with heart rate training, five zones, almost all of your running in zones one and two. Okay. A little bit in zone four and, oh, sorry. Some in zone four and a sprinkling in zone five. So we not much in three. Not much In three.
You could do some in three, and we'll talk about this. I, I kinda have like a, a wrap up at the end that kind of puts us all together is if you are [00:42:00] not running a huge amount of volume over the week mm-hmm. If you're not, I, I don't want to use like harsh terms if you're not that fast, like let's just kind of put that out there if you are running like 10 plus minutes per mile as your average training pace.
See,
[00:42:18] Angie: I, I don't like that you say that if you're not that fast. I know, but you, you can define fast in a lot of
[00:42:23] Kevin: different ways. So I Okay. Come up with a better way of saying that. If
[00:42:27] Angie: I, I, I just think that you don't put that term on it. Like don't put the word fast on it. Like you just say, if you are running, what, what did you say?
If you're running,
[00:42:34] Kevin: what if you're, if your comfort pace. Yeah. If your comfortable pace is 10 plus minutes above 10
[00:42:38] Angie: minutes, yeah. Okay. But then it doesn't mean you're not that fast.
[00:42:41] Kevin: I'm putting it in an arbitrary time cutoff. Just for the, you comparing 10 minutes. If
[00:42:45] Angie: you're comparing
[00:42:46] Kevin: it to elites, if you're comparing it to someone who's running a marathon in two and a half hours.
[00:42:50] Angie: Okay. So, all right, so what is the, what is the comment you wanna make and then I'll figure out a better way to say
[00:42:54] Kevin: thank you. Doesn't make me sound like I'm being a jerk, cuz I feel like a jerk saying it. Yeah, but it [00:43:00] makes more sense if you are comfortable. Pace is 10 plus minutes per mile. Okay. You can probably spend more time in zone three.
Okay. If you are com Well that, that's me. If you're comfortably training more under. Like if you're, if you're very comfortable faster than 10 minutes per mile, you don't need a lot of zone three. Okay. You're probably better off spending more time in one and two and focusing on that zone four threshold.
If you're comfortable training over 10 minutes per mile, you can sometimes push it a little bit more and be like, I'm gonna live in zone three today without getting negative
[00:43:34] Angie: benefits. I get a, but I do, according to my Garmin, I get, I do a lot of running in zone
[00:43:38] Kevin: three. Yeah. Which makes is that bad? No. No.
But you are very comfortable and, and happy
[00:43:44] Angie: because that's what they consider aerobic. Yes. Right. Like Garmin's, like, uh, I forget what they call zone one, but zone two is easy. Zone three is aerobic. Mm-hmm. Zone four is thresholds. Yep. And then zone five is I
[00:43:58] Kevin: think an anaerobic V2
[00:43:59] Angie: X. Yeah, [00:44:00] something like that.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember what they, I forget what they, what the exactly
[00:44:02] Kevin: term it. So yeah, in that case, and there's, there's two components to it. One, your general easy pacing, and two, your overall running volume. If you're running for say, 20 miles a week, 20 to 30 miles a week, that's great. Don't get, that is fantastic.
Great training relative to elites who are running a hundred to 130 miles a week. Yeah. That's fairly low volume. Right. You get elites that are like, yeah, well, after the marathon I took a week off and then I, I eased back into it with like 60 miles and then I was at 90 miles the next week. Mm-hmm. I'm like, well that's not easing back into it.
That's crazy for most people. Right, right. But if, if your vol training volume is 20 to 30 miles, 10 to 20 miles, you can spend more time in zone three without being worried that you're gonna overtax your body because you're just not out there as much time as people that are training at a hundred plus miles.
That's interesting. So I think [00:45:00] you get huge benefits. And this is the thing is I think in that world, the whole idea about, oh, spend 80% as easy as possible, I think you can push a little bit beyond what might be considered like super easy and gain benefits. I'm not saying do all of your running in zone three.
Yeah. But I think that you can venture into zone three a lot more often than someone who's racing Olympic qualifying times. Okay. That's, that's
[00:45:25] Angie: interesting.
[00:45:26] Kevin: And then of course, zone five is anything above. What you could hold for an hour and you get massive benefits at the low end of zone five. So there's no reason to spend so much time at the high end and just bury yourself in every single workout according to this model.
[00:45:40] Angie: Yes, indeed. All right, so that is the five zone heart rate model. And again, if you guys have questions on this, reach out to us on Instagram at Real life runners. Um, I'd love to get into any sort of discussion or answer any questions that you guys might have based on the knowledge that we have. And again, some of our knowledge of these other zone methods [00:46:00] is, More elementary because we tend, because we teach the effort based training level.
Right. So it makes so much sense. Right. So we know all of these other zone methods, but is it beneficial to go into this much detail for the majority of runners? We don't think so. Okay. Like again, let me just reiterate that as we're like halfway through. Well partway we gotta start wrapping up. Holy moly.
We still have a lot left on this outline, if that's okay. I know we might have
[00:46:26] Kevin: to make it into a three part series here. A three
[00:46:28] Angie: part series. My goodness. All right. Let's go into Power
[00:46:31] Kevin: Zones. Power zones. I can do Power Zones Quick. This is a newer one. It's newer. Okay. So Power Zones, if you have real fancy smartwatch, your watch might be telling you your Power zones.
Okay. Okay. Like the upper level versions of like Garmin watches and there's few other different styles of watches. They're estimating your power zones based off of like the G P s and it's trying to get weather predictions and whether you're going uphill or downhill, and literally it's, it's hitting up satellites to try and figure out if you're running into a
[00:46:59] Angie: headwind based off [00:47:00] the prediction.
Okay. So there's a lot of different data points that go
into
[00:47:03] Kevin: this. Right. And every single data point has its own air measurements into it.
[00:47:07] Angie: Right? Right. Okay, so, but what, what kind of things does this take into consideration? You just said G. So distance, speed, altitude, weather, so,
[00:47:16] Kevin: yeah. So your power zone is essentially how much work you're putting out over what period of time.
Okay. So it takes into account your speed. It takes into account the forces that you're pushing through the ground. Uh, so the, the way that it works, and it came from the world of cycling and a lot of training theory comes from the world of cycling. And so people are like, oh, well I see if we can use this as runners.
So there are so, so this
[00:47:39] Angie: might be a little bit more beneficial for
[00:47:41] Kevin: triathletes. Yes. The people are suggesting this might be a breakthrough area for runners. Okay. And by people, I mean people that are trying to sell new technology for you to buy a foot pod for a few hundred dollars. There you go. I mean, honestly, I think that's, that's a good reason why it's pushing this direction is because we've figured out how to take a power meter from [00:48:00] a bike and shove it onto a shoe.
Mm-hmm. And then they took the thing on the shoe and they tried to say, could we come up with similar numbers off of just a thing strapped to their wrist? Yeah. And it's as accurate as your heart rate is coming off of your wrist instead of a chest strap. There's airs built into all of it.
[00:48:16] Angie: Well, and that kind of goes back to that episode that we did a few episodes ago about what do you wanna spend your money on?
You know, like what do you want to spend time and money on? Do you wanna keep spending money on all these fancy gadgets? How much is that actually going to help you improve your running, especially if you don't already have a running coach.
[00:48:34] Kevin: Yeah, exactly. So, all right, here's I, I'm trying to sum up Power Zones fairly quickly.
Power itself is the amount of force that you're producing, um, over, uh, sorry. Uh, the amount of force you're producing, times the speed that you're running, or how much work you're producing over a small period of time. So if you increase the force but you're taking faster steps, your power goes up. So this is the whole idea that if [00:49:00] you increase your cadence, your foot's on the ground for less period of time, you increase your power.
Sprinting is about as powerful as you can possibly get. In order to make your power zones work, you actually have to go through a power zone test. It figures out your power, your threshold power, and then everything else follows from that. The overall concept is the same as heart rate training. It breaks it down into five zones.
Some of the systems break it down into six zones. I've seen both as I was researching for this episode five, I've seen five and six, but it's basically the same as heart rate zone training, except the people that say power zone training is better is because there's no lag. As soon as you start sprinting, your power zone reader is gonna say, oh, now your power zone just jumped from 150 to 400.
Oh, okay. Because it, it's an immediate sensation. It's based off of how fast your foot is moving and or whatever
[00:49:51] Angie: it's measuring. So the only lag is just the whether or not, like how quickly the sensor
[00:49:55] Kevin: picks up on it. Exactly. Which they're very, very fast. How accurate they [00:50:00] are is got a big more questionable.
Yes, exactly. So assuming that the power reading is accurate, it works in a similar manner to heart rate, it just doesn't have the lag. Therefore, should be in theory, uh, a better mechanism. Okay.
[00:50:16] Angie: That's power reading. Is there anything else we need to cover
[00:50:18] Kevin: about Power Zones? That's about as much as I know on Power Zones.
Yeah. So I, I don't wanna
[00:50:23] Angie: go. So you're a power zone expert and you would like to come on the podcast. Also send me a message on Instagram at real life runners because if you are like an expert in this, we are not. And so I would love to have you on to talk about power zones. Yeah, that'd be fascinating.
Yeah. All right, so let's talk about the three zone model, which is lactate threshold.
[00:50:41] Kevin: Yes. This is like the hot new training topic out there. Yes. Um, of figure out what your lactate level, your blood lactate level is and base all of your training off of that. Okay. So instead of level one through 10 or zones one through five, there's only three zones and that's it.
Okay. So, and everything fits in a three bucket. Does this
[00:50:59] Angie: require [00:51:00] like actually drying blood? Yes, it requires a
[00:51:02] Kevin: blood test. It requires actually drawing blood during running, during workouts. Okay. And this has been around for a while. Yeah. I, for a long time, one of our very early high school athletes went to like an elite training camp.
Mm-hmm. And she got her lactate threshold tested. So
[00:51:18] Angie: it's not a hot new training method, it's just. Gaining more
[00:51:21] Kevin: popularity. This has been around for 20 plus years. I mean, it's been around longer than that. It was trendy about 20 years ago and then people didn't really dive into it cuz it wasn't as accessible.
Yeah, they're getting easier to, they, they're, you can literally buy like a continuous lactate threshold
[00:51:34] Angie: there. I was just about to say this, the reason that they're getting more popular now is because they are selling like home kits for you to do this yourself. Of course they can.
[00:51:42] Kevin: Right. And some of the top Olympic athletes out there, the, the.
Brothers out of Norway, they train through this. They're winning all sorts of gold medals and setting world records. And people are like, oh, so the Norwegian training method must be the magic fix. Mm-hmm. But it always changes. Whatever the [00:52:00] fastest people are doing now has to be the most, the the best possible method of training.
Mm-hmm. And it's not necessarily the best method of training. It's the best, best method of training for that particular person. And then usually people go backwards and they're like, oh, well, before they came around it was the Kenyans and Ethiopians who were the fastest marathoners. And if you actually look at their training, they're doing this training.
They just weren't doing the blood testing.
[00:52:23] Angie: So when you see the elites that have like that thing on their arm is that the continuous lactate monitor, there's
[00:52:29] Kevin: so many things that they could be measuring with that. So many, many things that they could be measuring with that. All right, so let's go through this.
All right. So easy. So in
[00:52:37] Angie: the three
[00:52:37] Kevin: zone model, what do we got? Okay. Easy level is lactate levels below two millimoles per liter. This is where your body, as you work out, is creating lactate and it's clearing it, so it's not really building up very much. Okay. Okay. And
[00:52:52] Angie: lactate is a byproduct of energy production.
Thank you. Okay. So lactate is, people sometimes call it acid, which [00:53:00] is not a hundred percent accurate. It's lactate. And so basically when your body produces energy, if we, if we go back to like high school biology. Yep. One of the byproducts of energy production is lactate. And lactate then gets taken away by other.
Um, mechanisms in the body, and if it doesn't get taken away fast enough, it starts to build up in the body. So that's what we talk about when we say a lactate threshold. It's, it's the lactate is starting to build up in your blood and not being taken away at the
[00:53:31] Kevin: same rate. Yes. So at easy levels, you are being able to clear it as fast as you're being able to create it.
Produce it, yeah. So your body is, because your body can also use lactate as an energy source, right? Especially if you're going super easy. I remember back when I was in high school, I used to think that if, if you were going easy enough, you just weren't creating lactate, which is not the case at all, right?
You're just not, you're always creating it. You're always creating it. You're just clearing it as fast. So there's no buildup, right? This is in, in our opinions, this [00:54:00] is levels one through three. This is easy running. Your heart rate is nice and low. Everything feels comfortable. You're chatty the whole time.
All right? Then we get into medium. This is where the lactate levels in your body start increasing on a linear level. So if you do a lactate test, you do it on a treadmill, they keep sticking your finger and, and taking lactate readings off of this sounds terrible. It seems awful. Um, and then they plot how fast you're going and how, what the lactate levels are in your body.
So the numbers wise, this is from two to four millimoles per liter, but at the top end it kind of gets blurry. Okay. In order to be at lactate threshold training, which is the, the zone five, we've talked about zone five on a 10 zone model, zone two, uh, on a three zone model, zone four, four on the heart rate training.
Yeah. All of those threshold, or what I still refer to outta my Jack Daniels book as tempo training, that's, that's where you're here in this medium world and spending a large amount of time in here is [00:55:00] showing for elite athletes to be the best method of training. It is sustainable because you're not pushing yourself that hard.
Every workout does not feel like this super mental, I've really gotta get myself built up and fired up to do this thing. The the workouts are not brutal. And that's why you're able to then put so much mileage at this medium effort level. It's going away from I have to be either super fast or super slow.
It's saying that this middle zone is in fact quite beneficial.
[00:55:30] Angie: It's saying that it's the most beneficial, right? The most beneficial yes. Like for you to spend. So do they say that you should still be spending like the most amount of time in this
[00:55:37] Kevin: level? No. No. It's still like 80% of your time in, in easy.
In easy. Okay. And then spending basically, and here's, here's the fun part. You spend 80% of your time easy and 20% of your time, medium, and the rest at zone at the harder levels.
[00:55:54] Angie: The rest Uhhuh Uhhuh of 80 plus 20 Yeah. Equals a hundred. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:55:58] Kevin: Because Right, [00:56:00] because when you're a freakish Olympic level athlete, you don't have to, if you average out week upon week upon week, there's almost none spent at the top.
But periodically they'll have a week where they'll have five to 10% at that top. But
[00:56:12] Angie: that's very interesting though, because what they're showing is that physiologically they get this a lot of benefit at this threshold level. Yeah. But it's not as physically taxing on the body. Like the wear and tear and the pounding is not as much on the body.
Right. You're not going as fast. Right. So, and, and it decreases. You're not at a as high of a risk of injury because when you're going at faster speeds, like if you're going in a hard speed level, it levels eight to 10 on the effort level zone. Yep. You are putting yourself at a higher risk for injury than if you're going at a level four, five.
Yes.
[00:56:46] Kevin: Yeah, I mean that's, yeah, like everything about this
[00:56:48] Angie: is, is for elite runners, it makes a lot of, spend a lot of sense because, especially because their training volume is so high. Exactly. Right. So if they're running 90 to a hundred miles a [00:57:00] week
[00:57:00] Kevin: and 20% of their training means 20 miles at this pace, right?
So this pace can't be that fast, or you would get beat up super quick. Right? So being able to run a workout at, in, in our 10 zones at level four, level five is not that bad mentally or physically. You can keep coming back and hitting workout after workout of this. Mm-hmm. Elites are doing up to three or four speed workouts a week because they're doing doubles on multiple days.
Yeah. So, you know, the, the trendy Norwegian athletes are literally doing two lactate threshold workouts on, on Tuesday and coming back and doing it again on Thursday. Right. So it's a lot of training at this level. And then much less training at the higher levels. Well, and
[00:57:44] Angie: so there's a huge benefit here because they also learn how to control their effort.
Yes. And stay below that lactate threshold or like right at that lactate threshold. That's really the goal is like you wanna be, it's cuz it's obviously faster than easy, but you don't wanna exceed [00:58:00] that lactate threshold. You wanna basically get as close to the ceiling as possible and then just like
[00:58:04] Kevin: live there.
Right. Which is why I was saying if you are running a 10 K in say 50 minutes and you're trying to do this medium effort level, don't be like, oh well I'm gonna hit my 10 K effort because it's slightly faster, I'm gonna get more benefits. No, no, no. You've broken through the ceiling and it's no longer medium for you.
You've slipped ever so slightly into level three. It's the harder stuff. Okay. So let's talk about that. Okay. So. When you go between medium and harder, you jump from this. It's somewhere, and it depends on each athlete, and this is why you literally have to have your own personalized lactate curve created for you.
Cuz some people flip at like three millimoles and some people flip at four and anywhere in between. So at the harder levels, if you look on a curve, it goes from a linear increase. As I go faster, I build up more lactate to exponential. The amount of lactate in your blood just starts climbing through the roof.
It's somewhere in that three to four, three to five milli range. It's anything [00:59:00] faster than one hour race base. So you, you don't have to do a whole lot of that, that then this zone three fast running could be your 10 K rate, your your 10 K race for elites. Zone three might be a 10 mile race. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, if, if elites are running a half marathon right around an hour mm-hmm.
That is right on their cusp. Yeah. Like this is the huge difference between elites and all the rest of us. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:59:27] Angie: That the rest of us, we definitely get. A, a large benefit training at this level. Mm-hmm. But a lot of us can also get benefit training at those harder levels, whereas for elites, it might not be worth
[00:59:39] Kevin: the risk.
The risk reward of training beyond the, the medium effort level Yeah. Is not as beneficial when you're already so fast. Especially if you're training for things like, like a half marathon and a
[00:59:51] Angie: marathon. Yeah. So what do you think the benefit is for us as recreational runners then to train at those harder effort levels?
If, if elites aren't getting a [01:00:00] lot of benefits in not doing as much running at those hard eff effort levels, then
[01:00:04] Kevin: why should we, uh, speed still wins. Like the faster you can get, your faster levels, the better off you are. So if you never touch into how fast I can actually push my fast levels, everything else gets, it feels so close to running at your upper limit.
Mm-hmm. That it just feels so, so difficult if you never try to see how fast I can go. It's not super helpful for people who can already run, say sub four minutes for a mile to trust, to test out. How often can they do that? Yeah. And how far can they do that? But for people who are running, like a six minute mile is going really, really fast.
The difference between saying six minutes is about as fast as I can possibly go and five 30 is now as fast as I can go. The difference between saying eight minutes feels exhausting. What if you could turn that to seven 30? That's 30 seconds. If four minutes feels [01:01:00] exhausting, you can't go that much farther.
Yeah. Turning four into 3 55, you can't go that much faster. You can't go that much faster. Yeah. So it, they're not getting much. Actual benefit of saying, all right, four minute mile versus 3 55 as much as, say eight minute mile versus seven 30 versus seven, right? There's just so much more room to to
[01:01:20] Angie: work with.
So we as recreational runners have a lot more room for improvement than elite at, at the hands than elite does. Yes. Okay, so that makes sense. All right, so what the heck is the takeaway of all of this? Okay, because we went through a lot of information here, and again, guys, if you are feeling overwhelmed or confused by any of it, go back to effort level training.
All right? Yeah. Like effort level is. I mean, in our opinion, one of the best ways to train your body because it takes all of these, this scientific stuff and makes it easier for us as real life runners. Yep. The end. No, just kidding. Okay, so current training, [01:02:00] recommendations and theory and science. What, what is it, what do you think it
[01:02:04] Kevin: suggests that doing a whole lot more running at that moderate effort is in fact super key that you're For elites or for?
For everyone. For everyone. Okay. It suggests that there's huge benefits across the board. Okay. No matter the distance is the, also the interesting part, you're racing a 5k, you're racing a marathon. Mm. Spending more time at that moderate effort level is super, super helpful. Okay. Um, the, the big takeaway, and I think we said this all the way at the very beginning, is you should do a lot of running.
That is easy. You should do some running that is medium and you should occasionally go fast. But fast is very relative and likely slower than you have in your head. When you're like, oh man, it's gotta be like a really fast day. That might be your 10 K pace that might be pushing into your 5K pace. Going really fast does not mean how hard can I possibly run for the next minute.
That's not what fast is. Right.
[01:02:55] Angie: And basically what we want you to take away from this episode is that there's a lot of ways [01:03:00] to estimate moderate pace. Mm-hmm. There's time to exhaustion, there's effort level, there's power zones, there's heart rate zones. There's a lot of different ways that you can do that.
There's three zones versus five zones. Right. And so what you can see is that all of these different types of zone training have different levels of detail and different levels of, of complication. If you are someone that wants to. Trained by lactate and wants to prick your finger and give blood during your run so that you can figure out your own specific lactate thresholds.
Go for it. If that's something that you wanna spend your time and money doing, you have every right to do that. But how much more benefit will you get? Using that versus really tuning in and connecting with your body and figuring out, am I going medium? Does this feel easy? Like actually mm-hmm. Just checking in with yourself and saying like, how hard does this actually feel?
Right?
[01:03:53] Kevin: Because if you actually go off and run a half marathon, knowing what that actually feels like Yeah. Is going to be [01:04:00] incredibly useful. So being able to tune into your body, even people that are using like lactate levels, they eventually try and tie that into what does that feel like? Mm-hmm. So that you can then do regular workouts at what feels like the appropriate effort level.
Yeah. And, um, I had a couple of takeaways depending on, on where you're at, if you are a higher volume runner, I think the
[01:04:22] Angie: current, what do you consider a higher volume runner?
[01:04:25] Kevin: 50 plus miles per week. Okay. If you're a higher volume runner, the current research suggests that you may have greater benefit, um, by doing more.
Running in on a three zone model, in zone two on a, on on what we say of your, your L one through L 10, doing a little more running of L five and slowing down your easy rents. What do you mean more? So taking some of the runs that might be faster, fast workouts and putting them into medium workouts. Okay.
So
[01:04:56] Angie: we're still in the 20%. Yeah. We're still going by the 80 20 rule. Yeah. [01:05:00] Where 80% of your running should be easy in zone one. And you're saying even slow that down? Yeah. I'm saying because when you're in zone one, you could still feel easy and then you should slow that down even a little bit more. Yep.
Okay. Then spend about 20% 18 to 20%. Yep. In zone two. Yep. In moderate products. And then zero to 2%
[01:05:21] Kevin: in zone three. Yes. And okay for people who have lower volume workouts or, or slash and people who are very comfortable, this is, this is where you fall in. Yep. We, we covered before.
[01:05:33] Angie: So this is not an insult.
Otherwise he'd be in insulting his
[01:05:36] Kevin: wife. Yeah. And she's gonna, she's gonna gimme a dirty, dirty look. Okay. Which you can probably find on, on YouTube when we post this video up. Um, Y if, if that's you. And I think the bigger one here is, um, is volume on this one too, is if you are a lower volume runner, especially if you are generally doing like 10 to 20 miles per week mm-hmm.
You may get greater benefit from doing a little extra [01:06:00] speed of zone three on a three zone model. The faster stuff and when you're in your easy running, push it to the faster level of your easy don't go all the way into, into like moderate. So it's almost the opposite. Yep.
[01:06:14] Angie: Great. All right. So if you are running that clarified everything less seriously if you're running less than 50 miles a week, especially if you're like more in the 10 to 20 range, this is where I think
[01:06:23] Kevin: it really is gonna benefit.
If you're in the 10 to 20 range, then
[01:06:26] Angie: make your easy runs a little faster and, and do more in zone three versus zone two. Yep. All right. So there you go. That's what I got. And if you want help navigating all of this,
[01:06:41] Kevin: maybe I don't, I don't know how that wasn't perfectly
[01:06:42] Angie: clear. Maybe a coach could help you.
Okay. So, um, here, here's the thing guys. Again, I. There's a lot of details in this episode and my brain feels a little fried right now, and I'm a running coach, okay? And Kevin explained them and he gets super excited and nerds out [01:07:00] on this stuff, which is great. But again, how much is this, like these very, very specific recommendations, how much is it actually going to change your running versus if you make sure that you're getting enough sleep?
If you make sure that you're running most of your running easy, some of it medium, a little bit hard, like when you start make making sure that you're hitting those big rocks, you're going to make improvements in your running. And if you are someone that you know you're running is going well, and you feel like you need help getting those big rocks in place, we can help you.
If you feel like I've got my big rocks in place now I wanna take my running to the next level, we can help you also. Okay, so. If you are looking for some help and some guidance, figuring out the best way for you to train, maybe you've like listened to last week and this week and you're like, I am really not sure where I should start.
Reach out to us. Okay. We love helping runners to figure out the best way for them to train so that you can feel good while running. You can hit the goals that are important to [01:08:00] you, whether that's a faster 5k, a half marathon, an ultra marathon, whatever your goal is, we wanna help you hit those goals and feel amazing in the process.
So go check out our coaching program over on the website, real life runners.com/academy. That's our group coaching program. We also offer one-on-one if we have spots available. Um, but that's on an application only basis because we take a small number of runners for our one-on-one coaching, but our group coaching is a hybrid model.
You get the best of both worlds. You get. A personalized plan that's right for you. And you also get group coaching calls on a weekly basis where you can come talk to a coach, get all of your questions answered, and also be supported by an amazing community of runners that are there trying to make themselves the best runners that they can be too.
So check all of that out on the website, real life runners.com. Click on coaching when you get there and you can see all of our coaching options. And as always, guys, thank you so much for joining us today. We [01:09:00] know this is a little bit of a longer episode, so thanks for sticking with us.
[01:09:04] Kevin: You made it to this point, man.
You're having good time.
[01:09:07] Angie: This has been The Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 313. Now, get out there and run your life.
