[tobischneider]

Hey there, I have a short question concerning the definitioning of my training runs:

While I usually exclusively run on trails with lots of incline, yesterday I went out to run on some flat streets and found my pace to be extraordinarily fast, despite still being able to breathe very relaxed and keep my heart rate way below my AeT.

I found the run to be very refreshing and physiologically-speaking comfortably hard – it almost felt like the ‘relief’ you experience when doing short strides or accelerations at the end of a long aerobic training run with very low to medium speed (due to the many in- and declining).

As mentioned, my heart rate and RPE was very low – yet the speed very high, so I think this kind of training run really helped with my running economy and form as well as my maximum aerobic speed.

I would be planning on repeating this kind of run in future – probably around once per week – to help my aerobic speed developement and avoid this feeling of ‘slugishness’ some experience when training for longer periods of time below the AeT, however, I am quite unsure of how I should title a training run like this:
Recovery-wise, it is whether purely zone 1 or 2, I think, because the muscular demand is relatively high (the body is simply not used to this high speed), but I also can not consider it zone 3 or anything above AeT, because there was no accumulation of lactate at all and it felt very aerobic (almost like a recovery run, because the breathing was so easy).

How would you classify such a run? Maybe a ‘flat tempo run’ or ‘flat maximum aerobic speed’?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

Greetings from Austria 🙂

Topic

[Reed]

Reed on October 26, 2021 at 7:34 am #58486

It sounds like you’re describing a Zone 2 run, and you’ve gotten strong enough / fast enough that there’s a pretty substantial neuromuscular load in that heart rate range, as you said. It might be useful to look at other metrics to assess the load – if you were able to cover 30% more distance in the same time and at the same heart rate, there might be more stress on your muscles & joints than you’re used to, even thought the aerobic element is similar. Consider easing off on the pace, or perhaps doing some fartleks spice it up.

As for the “sluggishness” – that might be a reflection of substantial accumulated fatigue over many weeks or months. Trying to get rid of that sluggishness by running faster could be counterproductive. Taking an easy week, cutting volume by 50%, might help you absorb the training and feel more refreshed.