Having seen quite a few people on here extolling the virtues of this type of training, I decided to give it a go, and downloaded a Garmin plan to my watch. I'm not sure really what's happened, but I found I had to run slower and slower to stay in the zones, on one occasion at over 11 minutes per km. That's stupid, it's slower than walking pace....
Now my fastest sprint speed is about 8 mins/KM, slower than my easy pace used to be before...My cadence has dropped, my stride length has got shorter...
I saw someone else here say running with a slower runner (Damianair maybe?) reduced his pace too.
I've been plodding along with this since August last year, so not like I didn't give it a good chance....I've done two plans, a 5K and a HM...
I've all but given up on it, recently I've still followed the plan but I've chosen my own conversational pace rather than try to stick in Z2. The only thing I can say in it's favour is that it got me running longer distances without needing a rest break, but that's not surprising really....
I've been running 7 years....
Any thoughts/advice?
Written by
Curlygurly2
Graduate
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Hi Curly, unless you establish your actual max HR then your zones are based on averages, which probably don't match you in real life.
There are various means of arriving at a max HR but I will leave you to find those on the interweb, as there is potentially some risk attached to doing this and I don't want to be responsible for killing you.
I set my zones based on what I see from my runs. It's not the age from 220 algorithm. I've been running for a long time with a HR monitor and while I know they're not all that accurate, I think I can see my max from the hundreds of runs I've done. Also I wore a proper medical monitor for a week as part of some research. In any case, even if I haven't set the max correctly why would it result in me getting increasingly slower?
Yes, all of those things...plenty of speed work included in the plan, intervals/threshold runs twice a week...I swapped to reserve too, and no longer bother trying to stay in 2...it's really not worked out at all well for me.
My easy pace is slower than it used to be. That’s because I didn’t understand what easy pace was before and I was running too fast when I thought I was going easy. But I can still pick up the pace if needed and can go faster than I used to.
I tried to kerp my hr in the zones also, but my darn running speed is so consistent I gave up even looking at the measurement.If I sperd up, Im winded in a very short time, if I slow down its ridiculously slow. Frustrating, but after five years during which I really tried to "improve" its not going to change so I basically just accept it - forty years of smoking has its consequences after all.
I think it has reduced my pace, but I think the reason for that is I'm no longer concerned about going slower (I do go further, more often) I also do at least one 5 km run a week were I go for a faster final km, I think that just has the result of reassuring me that I still have some speed in me.
But I think you posted about this a while ago, so it's obviously bothering you.
If you're sure your loss of pace is totally down to this change and not something else, maybe go back to what you were doing previously.
Yes, you are right, I did post a while ago. I'm quite happy to tootle along at the slower pace most of the time, yes, I can go further and don't need a rest, but it's the loss of top end that's bothering me I suppose. I raced a 5K the other week, 45 mins....I used to do 37 easy.
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