[skzm]

Hello All – hope everyone one is well.

Just after some advice. On the weekend I had a Trail Run Marathon that I did and completed but my time was quite a bit slower than I feel I should have been able to do.

So to provide some background. I’m a 45m who’s been running recreationally since about 2010. Prior to this year – I always felt that the best way to train was to run as fast as you can, and the the longer the run the better. I’ve always struggled with frequency, and my volume was sporadic due to niggles and recovery etc. That said I did complete a few longer events – including the UTA50 (50k trail).

Then at the beginning of this year – I found out about 80/20 and read the book, and then from there read uphill athlete and all of it made a lot of sense to me, and I’ve been fully onboard since there (6-7 months). I did a 30min time trial to determine my AnT which was around 185 and have done a couple of 1hr heart rate drift tests to determine my AeT was 150 and now closer to 160. I’ve been able to maintain a lot more consistency – trying to run 4-5 times a week, and have been working on a 2-1 modulation and been able to get my volume up to around 55k-60k/week larger weeks. Those thresholds definitely put in in ADS category and have been doing pretty much all running in Z2. So feel like I’m progressing well.

So I ran this trail marathon on the weekend – I had previously run the shorter course 34k in 2019 and it took me a bit under 4hrs or 6.45k/min pace on average there are a few hills, and some technical etc. This year I ran the longer course which is essentially the same with an extra 8k added on and it took me a bit under 6hrs or around 8:25k/min which is quite a bit slower…

I’m thinking that there could be a few reasons for this as below – but be really interested to hear any advice from anyone

– That my body is still adapting to the increased volume/frequency. Looking back both the frequency / volume is over double now compared to then
– That I’m still working through my ADS and that I need to just continue to build frequency/volume and all will come good
– That I’ve gone too far the other way and neglected the 10%-20% in the higher zones. I’ve been pretty much doing all runs in Z2 – with the occasional interval session etc.

Cheers,
Toby

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