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Zone 2 training for runners. Help needed
Posted on 2/13/24 at 4:33 pm
Posted on 2/13/24 at 4:33 pm
I am running a half marathon in a week and it is too late to worry about the zone 2 training right now but would like to try it after the half. My issue is I use the Runna app and most of their routine is speed work and very little zone 2 stuff. How do you properly train using the zone 2 method?
This post was edited on 2/13/24 at 4:40 pm
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Posted on 2/13/24 at 4:41 pm to thadcastle
Speed work is great, but that can't be all that you do. From a few things I've read over the years, many coaches say to think about training a week at a time. Sort of like progressive overload. You want to increase a tiny bit week over week until you're a week or two out from your race, then you taper back.
You are going to see increases by intensity, duration, and frequency. If you are running 3 days a week, either increase how long those runs are, how intense they are, or add another run. Where Zone 2 comes in is typically a longer run on the weekends. If you're running for distance or time, you have to make yourself slow down so that you can run for longer.
Just one example, as there are several different running plans, but I used to run 2-3 days during the week and one longer run on Saturdays. I might do a 30 minute run at a 9 or 10 minute mile pace on Monday. Just a jog at lunch time. then on either Tuesday or Wednesday, focus more on speed. Keep it at 30 minutes or so, but run at an 8:30 pace, or faster if I was feeling good. Thursday I would do a repeat of Monday. Saturday I would go out for an hour plus, but at a much slower pace, like 10:30-11:00 minute pace.
The short version, plan a longer run at a slower pace on the weekends. If you've got a good max heart rate calculated, calculate what pace puts you in the middle to top of zone 2, and go at that pace as long as you can. It will feel easy, until you're a good 45 minutes to an hour into it.
You are going to see increases by intensity, duration, and frequency. If you are running 3 days a week, either increase how long those runs are, how intense they are, or add another run. Where Zone 2 comes in is typically a longer run on the weekends. If you're running for distance or time, you have to make yourself slow down so that you can run for longer.
Just one example, as there are several different running plans, but I used to run 2-3 days during the week and one longer run on Saturdays. I might do a 30 minute run at a 9 or 10 minute mile pace on Monday. Just a jog at lunch time. then on either Tuesday or Wednesday, focus more on speed. Keep it at 30 minutes or so, but run at an 8:30 pace, or faster if I was feeling good. Thursday I would do a repeat of Monday. Saturday I would go out for an hour plus, but at a much slower pace, like 10:30-11:00 minute pace.
The short version, plan a longer run at a slower pace on the weekends. If you've got a good max heart rate calculated, calculate what pace puts you in the middle to top of zone 2, and go at that pace as long as you can. It will feel easy, until you're a good 45 minutes to an hour into it.
Posted on 2/13/24 at 5:00 pm to TU Rob
quote:
The short version, plan a longer run at a slower pace on the weekends. If you've got a good max heart rate calculated, calculate what pace puts you in the middle to top of zone 2, and go at that pace as long as you can. It will feel easy, until you're a good 45 minutes to an hour into it.
Is it more difficult because it is in zone? Because running for 45 min currently is very easy.
Posted on 2/13/24 at 5:24 pm to thadcastle
The way I perceive it is, zone 2 should be at an intensity where you can still carry out a conversation albeit labored but still doable. Do that 2-3 times a week for whatever amount of time you have available and considering what your body can handle physically. On top of that mix in 1-2 sessions at threshold to V02 max.
BTW this is assuming you have a HR meter. I don’t do my zone 2 work based on talks test alone but a combination of the talk test and HR. I have a good idea of where my upper limit Z2 should be around 150 bpm my max hr is 190-192. And then I talk out loud while I’m riding to see how it feels at the moment. Basically a 2 factor authentication for zone 2.
BTW this is assuming you have a HR meter. I don’t do my zone 2 work based on talks test alone but a combination of the talk test and HR. I have a good idea of where my upper limit Z2 should be around 150 bpm my max hr is 190-192. And then I talk out loud while I’m riding to see how it feels at the moment. Basically a 2 factor authentication for zone 2.
This post was edited on 2/16/24 at 12:17 pm
Posted on 2/13/24 at 5:30 pm to thadcastle
Like crazyLSUstudent said, run easy enough that you could hold a conversation with a partner. That's zone 2. I don't get into the weeds about HR because it can vary so much. If it feels easy enough that you can chat, you're good. Do it for 75-80% of your total weekly mileage, the other 20% can be fast stuff.
Posted on 2/13/24 at 7:28 pm to thadcastle
Just started zone 2. I highly recommend the 80/20 book by Fitzgerald. I’d also highly recommend listening to the Peter Attia podcast with the San Milan guy. San Milan trains Olympic cyclists and is one of the major scientists behind the method.
Contrary to others in this thread, I’ll recommend a HR monitor. Why? It takes all the guess work out of it. If you can, a VO2 max test is also a good tool. VO2 max is a measurable value of your fitness and whether or not the zone 2 is working.
80% of my mileage is ‘easy’ meaning 120-130 HR. There is a bunch of speed workouts in the Fitzgerald book but it’s basically a tempo session and a VO2 session per week. I’m due for a half marathon in April and a VO2 retest. That’ll be almost 6 months of this.
Contrary to others in this thread, I’ll recommend a HR monitor. Why? It takes all the guess work out of it. If you can, a VO2 max test is also a good tool. VO2 max is a measurable value of your fitness and whether or not the zone 2 is working.
80% of my mileage is ‘easy’ meaning 120-130 HR. There is a bunch of speed workouts in the Fitzgerald book but it’s basically a tempo session and a VO2 session per week. I’m due for a half marathon in April and a VO2 retest. That’ll be almost 6 months of this.
Posted on 2/14/24 at 7:51 am to thadcastle
quote:
Is it more difficult because it is in zone? Because running for 45 min currently is very easy.
Zone 2 is training your body to spend more time in that metabolic range. Longer you do it, the faster you can get while staying in zone 2. Then you aren't burning your glycogen stores as quickly and will now be able to run longer and faster. You can only build up distance at higher zones so much. At some point, you run out of available calories because you run them faster in the higher zones and you can't process them fast enough from eating while running. Zone 2 training increases that efficiency. Also, it's less stressful on your body, so you can get more recovery while still getting mileage. I highly suggest the Daniel's Running Formula Book. Deals less with heart rate and more of paces, but same concept. Get a good 5k race pace, then provides easy, tempo, etc. paces along with some example running plans to show how much of each type of pace should be included in your training plan.
Posted on 2/14/24 at 9:30 am to thadcastle
Others have explained how running zone 2 should look so i wont get into that. For 80% of your miles your focus should be more on adding miles (without overdoing it) then running faster. The more you add miles theoretically the easier running whatever distance your targeting should become. Try to cap it at like a 10% increase in mileage per week to keep yourself from getting injured. The other 20% of your runs should be speedier stuff (short sprints, mile repeats, k repeats, fartlyks, tempos, etc.)
Posted on 2/14/24 at 10:25 am to Pedro
quote:
Others have explained how running zone 2 should look so i wont get into that. For 80% of your miles your focus should be more on adding miles (without overdoing it) then running faster. The more you add miles theoretically the easier running whatever distance your targeting should become. Try to cap it at like a 10% increase in mileage per week to keep yourself from getting injured. The other 20% of your runs should be speedier stuff (short sprints, mile repeats, k repeats, fartlyks, tempos, etc.)
As an example of this:
Last week I ran 40 miles -
Tuesday: 7 Miles, Intervals (hard)
Wednesday: 8 Miles (zone 2, easy pace)
Thursday: 4 Miles (easy) + 2 Miles Tempo (medium)
Saturday: 14 Miles (easy)
Sunday: 5 Miles (easy)
Now I want to increase my distance, I'm not going to go up more than 10% and I want to add the distance in "easy" milage, 43 Miles -
Tuesday: 7 Miles, Intervals (hard)
Wednesday: 9 Miles (zone 2 easy, added 1 mile)
Thursday: 5 Miles (easy added 1 mile) + 2 Miles Tempo (medium, this is Half marathon pace btw)
Saturday: 15 miles (easy, added 1 Mile)
Sunday: 5 miles (easy)
So I increased my milage by 3 miles (under that 10% threshold) with easy pace miles to give my body a chance to increase the milage without as much of a risk of injury.
Posted on 2/14/24 at 2:01 pm to thadcastle
I really enjoyed Garmin's training programs that you could download into your watch. You could do specific HR training programs. Once you set up the watch, it calculates your zones for you. Those zones can change as your level of fitness changes.
Posted on 2/14/24 at 3:00 pm to thadcastle
I purchased the Hanson plan off Final Surge. It has two SOS (something of substance days - mine are Tuesday and Thursday). Most other days are considered easy days.
Best part of this plan - you plug in your goal (half marathon or full marathon) and it gives you specific paces for each day you run. I'd highly recommend it.
Best part of this plan - you plug in your goal (half marathon or full marathon) and it gives you specific paces for each day you run. I'd highly recommend it.
Posted on 2/15/24 at 10:42 am to BaddestAndvari
Baddest
in general i think you have a pretty good layout for your weekly plan. I do question the 20% that is planned to be "hard". you have 7 miles intervals hard effort. is this 7 full miles of just intervals, what's the interval distance, overall distance you spend in the "hard" zone? You also have 5 easy + 2 tempo medium HMP? if you're almost breaking 6 min for one mile i would think this 2 mile tempo should be more like 5-10k pace.
there's been several comments about have much "science" was used to develop the zone 2 80/20 training plan so it would seem you would need to truly stick to it to achieve the full benefits.
Back to OP if you plan on sticking to a zone 2 plan get a chest strap heart rate monitor and take some of the guess work out of it. people tend to think their easy is easy and their hard is hard but both will tend to float more to medium unless you've been doing this for years. I've got almost 15k miles logged on strava since 2018 and what i define as easy feeling , run all day, my heart rate tells a slightly different story
in general i think you have a pretty good layout for your weekly plan. I do question the 20% that is planned to be "hard". you have 7 miles intervals hard effort. is this 7 full miles of just intervals, what's the interval distance, overall distance you spend in the "hard" zone? You also have 5 easy + 2 tempo medium HMP? if you're almost breaking 6 min for one mile i would think this 2 mile tempo should be more like 5-10k pace.
there's been several comments about have much "science" was used to develop the zone 2 80/20 training plan so it would seem you would need to truly stick to it to achieve the full benefits.
Back to OP if you plan on sticking to a zone 2 plan get a chest strap heart rate monitor and take some of the guess work out of it. people tend to think their easy is easy and their hard is hard but both will tend to float more to medium unless you've been doing this for years. I've got almost 15k miles logged on strava since 2018 and what i define as easy feeling , run all day, my heart rate tells a slightly different story
Posted on 2/15/24 at 12:24 pm to ks_nola
Thats the issue in basing it off purely heart rate data. Everything you can get out there short of getting on a tread and having legit straps attached to you is likely going to be at least partly inaccurate. I worked with a program that used the garmin chest straps alot and alot of the data we saw from those was still all over the place. More accurate than wrist based but still not amazing. Thats why using the "conversation pace" terminology is usually better. Thats something you can actually feel and not have to rely on data that may or may not be accurate. I rarely run with people so when im on my own if i can moth along to the words of whatever song im listening to without struggling i know im in a good place. I use the heart rate on my watch to get a general idea of where I was at effort wise on a run but i dont make any major training decisions base solely on it.
Posted on 2/15/24 at 1:36 pm to ks_nola
quote:
in general i think you have a pretty good layout for your weekly plan. I do question the 20% that is planned to be "hard". you have 7 miles intervals hard effort. is this 7 full miles of just intervals, what's the interval distance, overall distance you spend in the "hard" zone? You also have 5 easy + 2 tempo medium HMP? if you're almost breaking 6 min for one mile i would think this 2 mile tempo should be more like 5-10k pace.
Sorry, that's where being in the training itself makes sense to me and might not to someone else.
Never do interval or HIIT without a warmup, the 7 Miles includes a mile warmup and mile cool down, so 5 miles in all for "high intensity" which falls into the 20%.
If you are doing a plan that has "Tempo Miles" or "Marathon Pace" miles, "marathon pace" is pretty obvious but "tempo miles" can be confusing. I looked it up, and "tempo miles" should be Half Marathon pace. Because I have worked meticulously on my zone 2, only 2-3 miles of Tempo keeps my heart rate and perceived effort well below that "hard effort" you want to stay away from. (For reference my Tempo is about 7:35, marathon pace for this training is 8:05). I can sing and talk with 0 resistance at those distances and those paces. If you are early on with zone 2 stuff I wouldn't do a lot of tempo work, but I would test out your Marathon Pace some just to see if you can keep your effort/ HR under your lactic threshold.
So in all I keep my hard efforts to the 20% threshold, with a very small amount of Marathon / Tempo stuff thrown in to train my body for those paces, but short enough that I do not put any kind of taxing effort on the muscles or joints, to once again decrease the chance of injury
This post was edited on 2/15/24 at 1:39 pm
Posted on 2/15/24 at 2:01 pm to Pedro
quote:
Thats why using the "conversation pace" terminology is usually better. Thats something you can actually feel and not have to rely on data that may or may not be accurate. I rarely run with people so when im on my own if i can moth along to the words of whatever song im listening to without struggling i know im in a good place.
I've mentioned it before, probably in the cycling thread, but I do a ton of Peloton spin classes. About 100% of what I do is Power Zone training, and while that is similar to Zone 2 HR training with the endurance based classes, there is a little difference as there are 7 zones there instead of 5 like with HR. These classes assign you a range to stay within based on a fitness test, and all of the calculations are there on your bike, but the idea translates over to running or any other endurance activity pretty closely. Conversation pace and tempo pace are talked about a lot with the instructors. A zone 2 on the bike, which is 2 out of 7, is what they refer to as a conversational, all day pace. One of the coaches like to say if you can breathe with your mouth closed, you're probably in the right spot. Up one level to Zone 3, you'll have to open your mouth to breathe, but you're not huffing and puffing, and while you can continue to have a conversation, the answers get shorter. Moving up to your Zone 4, they compare it to one word answers, and beyond that you should be breathing so hard you can't talk besides some occasional swearing.
Posted on 2/15/24 at 2:08 pm to thadcastle
Most people starting Zone 2 training have a really hard time keeping it in Zone 2. It takes some self control. Feels way too easy to be accomplishing anything. You might have to hit walking pace when going up hills. Zone 2 is great if you have the time to devote to the training. But if you are only training 5-6 hours a week 80/20 probably isn't the best regiment.
Posted on 2/15/24 at 2:37 pm to BaddestAndvari
it sure comes across as you meticulously knowing exactly what you are doing. I hope you achieve all you goals. I've never trained based on zone 2 theory but i fully grasp the concept. I'm a low 2:50's marathoner and ran multiple ultras including badwater so when I ask questions/ make comments its with some type of "training" experience.
I've seen many people do this "spend very small amount of time at Marathon / Tempo pace" during training to do exactly that come race day and come up short of their pace goal. I'm no math wizard but 20% of a 40 mile week is 8 and if you're only actually spending 5 miles in the "hard"zone your coming up 37.5% short of your training goal.
I've seen many people do this "spend very small amount of time at Marathon / Tempo pace" during training to do exactly that come race day and come up short of their pace goal. I'm no math wizard but 20% of a 40 mile week is 8 and if you're only actually spending 5 miles in the "hard"zone your coming up 37.5% short of your training goal.
This post was edited on 2/15/24 at 2:51 pm
Posted on 2/15/24 at 3:02 pm to ks_nola
quote:
I've seen many people do this "spend very small amount of time at Marathon / Tempo pace" during training to do exactly that come race day and come up short of their pace goal.
I actually spend a lot more time at marathon / tempo pace than my "plan" above shows, which also pushed me a little above the 80/20 most weeks, but that's more "variations on the spot" than the actual plan. Like I will do at least 2 miles tempo at later miles on my long run and at least 2-3 miles marathon pace during my long mid week run and/or on my long run as well
Posted on 2/18/24 at 7:35 pm to thadcastle
I use Runna too and 2/3 runs every week are zone 2 for me. I run on MWF where Monday is an easy short/medium Z2, Wednesday is a tempo workout, Friday is a long Z2. Tuesday and Thursday are strength days. Might be a setting or specific plan you’re running, but they do have options for a good bit of Z2
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