Hey xcskier,

The important thing to remember with adjective-based intensities is that they are all relative, never absolute. They may be relative to max, to anaerobic threshold, to aerobic threshold, or to race pace, but they’re always relative to something.

Also, different schools of thought may use the same adjective for different intensities, so it’s great that you’ve thought to clarify this.

In your post, you mentioned “regeneration” paces. That makes me think that you’ve been reading some Renato Canova? If so, Canova uses “slow” to describe 80-85% of aerobic threshold.

When in doubt, go slower!

I hope that helps.

Scott S.

P.S. @maxf: Heart rates are like fingerprints; they’re only relevant to the individual. It’s impossible to apply accurate heart rate prescriptions to different people.

I should have said, “When in doubt, go easier.”

Although “slow” is often used, again, it’s relative to an athlete’s reference point. Although tedious at first, those “slow” paces will stop being slow, although they’ll still feel easy.

Long Slow Distance should really be called Long Easy Distance.

For race-specific training, yes, that’s true.

But even Canova’s athletes put in most of their time in the easy range to support their race-specific training. There’s a log online somewhere of Moses Mosop’s training before his 2:03 marathon. 80+% of his time was in this easy zone.

I couldn’t resist.

I went through the Mosop pre-Boston training schedule and converted all of the workouts to minutes-per-intensity to find out exactly how much time Mosop spent where.

Here are the statistics:

LABEL % OF AeT TIME SPENT PERCENTAGE
Easy 49-68% 100h 02m 57%
Moderate 68-78% 36h 00m 21%
Sub-AeT 79-100% 33h 21m 19%
Super-AeT 100+% 5h 43m 3%
TOTAL 175h 05m

In three and a half months leading up to a marathon PR of 2:03, Mosop only trained above AeT for less than six hours. The six hours were spread over nine workouts.

Recovery intervals during hard workouts were assigned to their respective zones of intensity. So only the actual high-end work was assigned to the super-AeT zone, not the entire workout.

I find this amazing for a couple reasons: First, only 3% of his volume was super-AeT; 97% was below AeT. Second, the vast majority of his volume (78%) was spent on easy and moderate training.

To be fair, I suspect that Mosop’s AeT and AnT are very close together, perhaps only a 30″/km difference. That being the case, the stress for him to train in the sub-AeT zone would be much higher than it would be for the rest of us mortals.

I’m just the messenger…

One thing to consider about comparing the percentages is that Seiler quantified the breakdown using sessions. Mine is by the minute.

So the ratios are not apples to apples. If done by the minute, then Seiler’s ratios would be closer to mine. I’m not saying they would be identical–Mosop and Kipchoge have different coaches–but Seiler’s numbers overstate the actual minutes of high intensity workload and understate the low intensity.

Also, I’m not saying that Canova’s methods are the only way. They are just obviously very effective. As are Sang’s (Kipchoge’s coach).

On a personal note, I tried increasing the polarization in my own training last summer by doing a lot of ridiculously-easy volume. It had a very positive impact. I’m faster overall.