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80/20 running questions.
5512bf
Posts: 389 Member
I've been reading this 80/20 book and have a few questions or clarifications. I had a lactic threshold and max HR test done recently to help identify and pinpoint my training zone. Currently Z2 (easy) is up to 140 BPM, Z3 (aerobic) is up to 157 (78% of Max). Z4 threshold is 158-162 and Z5 Hard is 162-190(max).
Based on the 80/20 principle all my runs in Z2 & Z3 are part of the 80%. My marathon pace is targeted at 155 and I'll begin some Steady State runs at that target Hr this week to help pinpoint what my marathon pace will be in October. Obviously heat and humidity in the summer will most likely make that pace change and trend lower closer to October. However the goal is to try and maintain that HR regardless of exact pace for anywhere from 6-10 miles over the next 6-8 weeks. If successful in keeping that 155 HR would that technically still be part of the 80% since I never went into threshold?
Also on my interval runs and tempo runs, do you log the entire workout including warmup and cool down as part of the 20% or just the interval potion and tempo portions. Today was track day and I did a 2 mile warmup and 2 mile cool down in z2/z3. The 4 miles of intervals/recovery were Z4 & Z5. Would I consider 4 miles in the 80% & 4 in the 20% or 8 in the 20%? My tempo runs are currently 2 miles warmup and 40-45 minutes of slightly slower than 10k pace which gets me to about 170BMP towards the end then a cool down of a mile or so. Those 2 runs minus the warmup and cool down are about 9-10 miles which is about 20% of the 48 miles I ran last week. If these marathon target HR runs also will count then I'm going to need to cut some hard runs back or add in a few more easy runs during the week. My current plan will peak about 75-80 miles in September so I'm not really wanting to add too much.
Based on the 80/20 principle all my runs in Z2 & Z3 are part of the 80%. My marathon pace is targeted at 155 and I'll begin some Steady State runs at that target Hr this week to help pinpoint what my marathon pace will be in October. Obviously heat and humidity in the summer will most likely make that pace change and trend lower closer to October. However the goal is to try and maintain that HR regardless of exact pace for anywhere from 6-10 miles over the next 6-8 weeks. If successful in keeping that 155 HR would that technically still be part of the 80% since I never went into threshold?
Also on my interval runs and tempo runs, do you log the entire workout including warmup and cool down as part of the 20% or just the interval potion and tempo portions. Today was track day and I did a 2 mile warmup and 2 mile cool down in z2/z3. The 4 miles of intervals/recovery were Z4 & Z5. Would I consider 4 miles in the 80% & 4 in the 20% or 8 in the 20%? My tempo runs are currently 2 miles warmup and 40-45 minutes of slightly slower than 10k pace which gets me to about 170BMP towards the end then a cool down of a mile or so. Those 2 runs minus the warmup and cool down are about 9-10 miles which is about 20% of the 48 miles I ran last week. If these marathon target HR runs also will count then I'm going to need to cut some hard runs back or add in a few more easy runs during the week. My current plan will peak about 75-80 miles in September so I'm not really wanting to add too much.
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I've always interpreted 80/20 as general ballpark figures rather than a hard and fast rule. Heart rate zones are kind of theoretical, anyway. Good general guidelines as a proxy for effort. Not Absolute Laws of the Universe.
Run most of your miles easy. Run some of your miles very hard. Don't get bogged down in the middle paces. Whoop there it is.
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cheshirecatastrophe wrote: »Heart rate zones are kind of theoretical, anyway. Good general guidelines as a proxy for effort. Not Absolute Laws of the Universe.
If I know my lactic threshold, and my max HR, then these wouldn't be theoretical any longer right? I would think running only by perceived effort would have a higher degree of error than by using percentages of HR.0 -
I don't mean to say that there isn't a transition from aerobic=>mixed=>anaerobic, or that the general ideas aren't backed up by observations. But I think attaching very specific numbers to any of this takes it a little too far. There are too many variables that can affect heart rate on a given day. Lactate threshold is a nice number to know and even better to change in your favor
, but as far as training purposes go, it's not even a useful boundary between moderate and high effort. (You'll find training plans generally want you a little above or a little below LT pace for "LT" runs, for example).
And you're not negating all the benefit of your workout from going 1 bpm above your "aerobic threshold" or whatnot. That's why HR-based training plans generally advocate a *range* of HR rather than a single target number. And as to your original question, the study that Fitzgerald cites didn't use EXACTLY 80/20. It's something like 79/3/18 (I don't remember the exact numbers; forgive me). It was compared to a study of 50/50 to illustrate a real difference. I'm not aware of studies that compare exactly 80/20, 85/15, 75/25, etc.
For what it's worth, when I do math, I only count the actual miles run hard in my "run hard" total.
Do your thing. Follow your marathon training plan. Do most of your running easy. Do a little of it very hard. Have fun out there. This is our hobby and our joy.0 -
Your warm up and cool downs do not count as part of your 20%, only the time when you are actually in the higher zone. The exception is when you do intervals or hill repeat runs, the cool down periods between intervals does count towards the 20% because your HR will never really come back down into the target zone. If you are not using one of the plans towards the back of the book, you may just want to check them out because he explains the breakdown.Based on the 80/20 principle all my runs in Z2 & Z3 are part of the 80%. My marathon pace is targeted at 155 and I'll begin some Steady State runs at that target Hr this week to help pinpoint what my marathon pace will be in October. Obviously heat and humidity in the summer will most likely make that pace change and trend lower closer to October. However the goal is to try and maintain that HR regardless of exact pace for anywhere from 6-10 miles over the next 6-8 weeks. If successful in keeping that 155 HR would that technically still be part of the 80% since I never went into threshold?
Where does this come from? I do not recall this being part of the 80/20 plan, so I'm not sure how to answer your question.0 -
lporter229 wrote: »Where does this come from? I do not recall this being part of the 80/20 plan, so I'm not sure how to answer your question.
After reading a bit further I found his zones are based on %HRM (max) while my zones are currently set at %HRR (reserve) which puts my aerobic zones zones slightly higher on a percentage basis. 77% of my HRR is 157 and my target Marathon pace is 152-155ish. Based on %HRM any of my marathon target pace runs would be in the 20% even though they would be higher in my aerobic zone but still below threshold. I'm sorta baffled that a 6-10 mile marathon pace runs would be considered part of the 20%. Those miles should be relatively easy to conquer, if not you'll never finish 26 of them. At a current 54 mile weekly volume if Include this run I'd have 16 miles of moderate & hard workouts going over the 20% to 30%. Doing the math going forward it looks like I'll be closer to 75/25 at peak which means I'll probably need to add in a 6 mile easy run in the evening after my Tuesday track workout. It would increase my workouts from 7 a week to 8 and give me 2 doubles which is doable. My wife and the added laundry might think otherwise.
I've had the book for a while and just started reading through it and haven't really looked at any of his plans in the back. My current plan is a hybrid of a couple of different plans that are offered from a local running store as part of the marathon training they offer for all participants. For me, their advanced plan was a bit more than I wanted to tackle, but their intermediate plan didn't have me running as many days I wanted to so my trainer & I modified it a tad. I'll peak about 75 miles where the advanced was closer to 85, and intermediate was closer to 60.
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I wouldn't over think that. There is a pretty decent gap between the upper end of zone 2 and the lower end of zone 3 in the 80/20 plan. He explains that he keeps the upper end of zone 2 intentionally low to keep runners from doing all of their zone 2 training in that "gray area". I inferred this to mean that that area is still considered zone 2, but that you should strive not to stay in that zone too often. I think if your target marathon pace falls there and you intend to do a small part of your zone 2 running there, you will be okay. Most of his plans are structured so that you end up in that zone at the end of most of your longer runs anyway.Based on %HRM any of my marathon target pace runs would be in the 20% even though they would be higher in my aerobic zone but still below threshold. I'm sorta baffled that a 6-10 mile marathon pace runs would be considered part of the 20%. Those miles should be relatively easy to conquer, if not you'll never finish 26 of them.
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Heart Rate Training Zones (Run):
Easy/Recovery (E) Zone: 115-140 bpm
Aerobic Maintenance (A) Zone: 141-157 bpm
Threshold/Steady (T) Zone: 158-162 bpm LT HR 159 bpm
Interval (I) Zone: 163+ bpm
This was the results from the testing I did with max achieved at 189, which I've hit over a few times in the past 6 months, I'm 42. I interpreted easy as Z2, Aerobic as Z3, Threshold as Z4 and Interval as Z5, is that how you'd interpret this?. Based on the 80/20 at 77% of HRM being 145 I'd be excluding the majority of the Aerobic zone. Am I correct in thinking that his "grey" area would be 146-157? I had figured my target MP to be in this"grey area", at least for the first 18-22 miles.
So far I also understood that ventilatory threshold is slightly below the more commonly used lactate threshold. If in fact that grey area is closer to 15 beat per minute lower, I completely miscalculated that. So far my easy and recovery runs have had average HR over 6-14 miles of less than 140 so I got the east part down, I think. Intervals & hill repeats are easy because you just let in fly/recover/repeat and Tempo runs of 5-7 miles are fairly easy to judge based on previous 10k races. Dialing in that ideal MP is going to be tricky if i don't ever get to run at that pace for any length of time if it's in that grey area.
Thanks again for helping me digest this as I go.
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If I recall Matt Fitzgerald's book correctly, any run where you get into one of the higher zones, the entire run counts as being in that high zone and so the entire time (since he primarily counts time at zone, except the long runs which should be done at a lower pace until the plan calls for speedier runs towards then end of the training cycle) all fit into the plan as being the 20%.0
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