[goingup]

After doing two heart rate drift tests, I confirmed that I have ADS (an earlier nose breathing test steered me wrong). I know I have some quality Z2 time in my future over the next few months. 🙂

Question – I do a lot of training on hills and my heart rate drops out of Z2 (and occasionally Z1) on the downhill. The book recommendation is to count the time of the entire run as Z2. However, will I see faster improvement in my ADS if I switch to flatter ground for a majority of runs so I can get more hours per week in a true Z2 range? My goal for this base building period is to improve AeT as fast as possible.

Thanks!

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on October 7, 2020 at 9:27 am #45762

Probably. But what are you training for? Downhill trotting, although HR falls, has a valuable strength effect if trail running or something similar is your main sport.

[goingup]

goingup on October 7, 2020 at 1:25 pm #45789

My main sport is trail running and I try to work in a lot of vertical into my current training regimen. There are obvious benefits to running downhill (outside of the fact that I like running in the mountains more than the flats) but with a limitation on the number of hours I can spend per week running, am I better off trading vert to focus on improving my AeT and maximizing time spent at Z2 for an extended training block?

Future (unregistered for yet) races in 2020 – hilly 50K in spring, potential summer 50M or 100K, second 50K in fall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on October 7, 2020 at 5:41 pm #45807

Like Scott S said. Do not discount the value of down hill running. If you are training for mountain running you will see better gains by training on hillier terrain than staying on the flats so you can get more Z2 time. Running and hiking uphill involves a significantly larger muscle mass than running on the flats and so you need to be training as specifically as you can.

scott