65-75mpw easy only (in "zone 2" HR)

rothomaq wrote:

I've spent the past few months building my weekly mileage form around 40mpw to 70mpw last week. It's all I'm doing, 6 runs a week each between 1h40m and 2h. No spadework or another else. Just lots of easy running and building volume.

What am I gaining by this and what am I missing by only doing this?

I'm aware it's best to add in 1-2 workouts a week, proper speed work and longer runs bearish race pace... which I plan on doing in the fall. However, that will be after 2 solid months of 70mpw average.

I'm a 1h24m17s Half PR, looking to go sub 1h20m this spring and then a sub 3 hour, so race paces between 6"10-6:50.

Just my take, but in cycling the pure base works pretty decent, but it's contigent on being able to do two things:

1) Put in sufficient time

2) Ensure progression

Going nice and easy is a fairly light stimulus. If you've really been neglecting that work, you might see modest gains the first month or two even running the same volume as normal, but that will taper off. Generally, you want to keep pushing the volume.

It's also very beneficial to keep extending at least one long effort. For cycling this would go out to 6 or 7 hours, for running you could probably build to 2-3 hours. There is real aerobic benefit to fatiguing the slower twitch muscle fibers and then having to recruit more intermediate types to work aerobically.

In cycling, I improved dramatically over the first two years doing more typical training, 2-3 hard workouts a week type stuff, around 10 hrs/wk. I then held stagnant for about a year, and then decided to do a full 6 months just easy, extending volume. This was done very easy, as mentioned before around 60-70% HRmax, mostly towards the bottom of that. HR was the guide.

I improved dramatically during this time. I gained 7% on my threshold output, and closer to 25% on my output at that 60-70% HRmax intensity. The fact that I got outright better, going easier, at similar volume to what I had been doing before was a huge shocker. I would have at least expected to need hard workouts to see my race pace efforts improve. I didn't.

Once I added in those harder efforts, I jumped another 8%. That's a little over 15% total improvement from peak condition to peak condition. I eventually shaved another 5% over the next couple years as volume grew from 10-12 hrs/wk to 15-20 hrs/wk.

Research and person experience both suggest to me that there is a SIGNIFICANT benefit to going much easier most of the time. It's difficult though. You really have to keep the ego in check. 60-65% HRmax is a really sluggish pace at first. It does get better, but it's always slow. It's difficult to know you're in say 1:20 shape for a half, and here you are out jogging at 9+ pace getting passed by guys that look like breaking 1:50 would be hard for.

The only caveat I have: my experience was mostly with cycling. I'm just now coming back to running a bit.

From prior experience, I'm not sure absolutely NO workouts is good in running. For me, there seemed to be value to my stride/mechanics/muscle memory to stay in touch with running at pace. It's very easy to get lazy, sluggish. and sloppy when only running easy. The occasional tempo, light 400 session (mile pace type thing, but with longer rests so each repeat is near fresh), some moderate fartleks/progression runs, and then especially strides/pure speed sessions are worth keeping in. The key with any of those is that they aren't meant to be challenging.

Looks like you experienced very similar things to what I did on the bike, as well as in running finding it valuable to have some fast (but not hard) running mixed in for stride mechanics and muscle memory.

Much more skill and tendon properties involved in running as compared to cycling with a very fixed motion.

go for it man wrote:

OP is not elite and this sounds like an approach which will work for lowering his HM time from 1:24 to sub 1:20. This training isn't optimal (doing the math it appears your training runs are really, really slow) but do it if that's what you want to do.

It's pretty optimal. Almost all elites train this way, across all endurance disciplines. Usually about 90% of running, by time, is spend below AeT, and most of that well below AeT.

Sure, guys like Rupp are doing most of their easy runs between 5:45-6:30 pace, but scale that. Rupp is a 60' HM guy. OP is in, let's say, 1:22 shape. That's 36% slower. If we take 6:00 pace for Rupp, and scale that up 36% we get 8:15 pace....

Right about where the OP is running.

Many guys between 15'-18' 5k range are running too fast, and the vast majority of guys around 18'+ 5k pace are running too fast most of the time (if we assume that the training typical of professionals is optimal).

A couple things

a) Our guy sounds like he is closer to 9:00+ min miles. At best we are talking 8:30. At worst we are talking 10:15.

b) you can't ignore the 14 or so miles of quality work that Rupp is doing. Nobody suggests that you shouldn't being running a ton at slow paces. Doesn't mean you get to skip the other stuff.

OP, I think you are on the right course.

I finally broke 3hrs and ran 1:20:xx over the last year. I have also increased my mileage significantly over the covid period approximately 20 mpw more than last year. I kept a once a week moderate run at MGP in there, but you should be fine. Keep strides in your program 1-2 times a week and add in moderate pace of MP runs once a week. Once you determine your goal race add in LT and speed economy work and you will see big returns from your mileage investment.

So here’s my question. You say you’re coming over from cycling. Do you even know what the full range of running workouts are?

I have been doing one long run and one workout per week all year, pandemic or no pandemic. My coach has been alternating between short intervals, medium intervals and tempo. Periodizing with a rest day every 20 or so.

The reason I did this, with no race on the horizon until two weeks ago, is simply that it’s all still quite new to me and thus quite fun. I’ve only been running four years. This year I have been building in volume _and_ working my fast twitch muscles. It is not an either/or. I am 55 and a bit faster than you at 5K and half. I don’t pay super close attention to my easy run times, but I certainly have worn the strap long enough to know what kind of effort produces what kind of HR. And based on that I typically turn out 8:15-8:45 easy runs when I’m feeling frisky and 9, 10, even 11 minute miles otherwise. There’s nothing I enjoy more than a super slow easy run, based on the most effort I can muster, the day after a kickass workout.

So if you’re over workouts, fine, don’t do them. But you can always benefit from workouts. They might not even impact your mpw (I often log higher mileage on workout days which makes up for the 6 I log the day after). I can’t believe you wouldn’t boost your fitness, and you’ll be glad for that when you start racing again.

Good stuff OP.

Heart rate zones are a good way at quantifying effort. Zone 1 is best for athletes lacking an aerobic base, but after a couple months all you really need is Z2 to base build further. This effort or pace is typically much slower than what most would consider their normal training pace. You run 8:20-8:50 with a 1:24 half, that can and should feel easy, but it is not junk at all. Zone 3/4 are your tempos and longer repeats, and zone 5 will be speed work or hill repeats.

Race specific workouts imo should begin once you've overcome any aerobic deficiencies. There are numerous ways to test that if ya Google it.

Generally one should not emulate an elite athlete too closely as the stimulus needed for them to improve typically includes workloads average joes and subelites can't handle, but a rough guideline following them is fine.

I recommend 80/20 Running as a good read.

Missing a lot wrote:

All runners should do quality workouts all the time, even when base building and increasing mileage. Not "1-2" but 2-3. It's not something you do after 2 months of easy running, it's something you do all the time.

No! During base building 1-2 quality workouts suffice [especially for those only running 6 days a week]. Simply picking up the final 5k of a long run to marathon race pace, and doing one quicker session - fartlek, hills, tempo, or track work is all one needs to keep good running economy during the base work.

what's the right weight range for a male 30-34 runner what's 6ft tall?

Good post

I was going off this, where he stated the following:

rothomaq wrote:

Zone 2 is 60-70% of HRreserve for me.I have years of data on HR so I'm confident in my zones. I'm not sticking to this religiously or doing proper MAF but have noticed my pace per HR, from even 6 months ago, has dropped.

My average paces are between 8:05-8:50, I go by feel and let my body run at the pace it wants in that range. Most runs are averaging 8:20-8:30.

Maybe I misunderstood and those were his old paces though.

b) No, you can't ignore the quality stuff. My point is more just to emphasize what pace Rupp is running the easy mileage at. It sounds fast as hell to run easy runs at 5:45-6:30 pace, but scaling it helps many runners realize that if Rupp ran they way they did, he would do most of his easy mileage between 5:00-5:30 pace.

My other point with b) is that Rupp, even if he wasn't doing much quality work, would not want to shift the paces of those easier efforts. Going harder doesn't give any greater aerobic benefits. That's one of the big things to come out of Seiler's research. We've always known elite athletes across all disciplines do the vast majority of training (90%) at paces below AeT (which is a little slower than MP).

The research has helped establish why this works, which is that at aerobic intensity (below AeT) training behaves more as an ON/OFF switch. It is time-exposure dependent, and is NOT dose response dependent. As long as you meet a minimum threshold, which seems to be around 60% of HRmax, you get virtually the same benefits as going at 75%-80% of HRmax. Same benefits, with lots less stress. This allows for a combination of more recovery or more volume.

The higher intensity stuff is different. That IS dose response dependent to some degree. In other words you can get similar (not identical) benefits from spending 15 minutes at 95% of HRmax as you can spending 45 minutes at 88% of HRmax.

The dose response dependent makes sense to most people. It's intuitive. You work harder, you're more tired, you benefit more. It's the easier stuff that is tricky, both from an ego and a "trusting it works" perspective.

And it really works. I coach some and have been observing athletes and their training for a while now. I've seen lots of athletes doing 7-12 hrs/wk of training, most of it fairly solid work with good structured intensity, but with a tendency to do aerobic mileage on the more intense side. The difference between "this is mindlessly easy" and "this is totally comfortable but I'm getting some training in". When they shift from the latter to the former, even if they drop the intensity dramatically, they see gains. This holds even if the total duration of training remains they same. They go easier, with less hard training, and get faster. Very counter intuitive. Didn't fully accept it until I did it in my own training.

That said, if you go easier AND increase the duration, the results are even better, especially if you put in a reasonable progression on the duration as well as the duration of the longer efforts.

This is a good post and all makes perfect sense, and fits my own experience. For older runners, I've often thought that it would be safer and just as beneficial to drop the intervals and do 2 threshold runs each week. However, this never seems to get recommended?

weight range wrote:

what's the right weight range for a male 30-34 runner what's 6ft tall?

In what context? Maximizing performance?

SHORT ANSWER: "As light as you can get; eating a healthy, higher protein, nutritious diet, and without seeing: increased susceptibility to injury, decreased workout/race performance OR consistency in workouts/races, decreased recovery, decreased quality of sleep, increase in frequency of getting sick, noticeable and sustained increase hunger/appetite/cravings.

Those are the bodies "I'm too lean, FEED ME" signals. Respect them. If you don't one of two things will happen:

1) You'll fall apart before your key races and either burn out or get injured.

2) You'll make it one season/cycle and have a breakout performance. Shortly thereafter, #1 will occur.

We've seen this pattern often, especially in female runners who develop eating disorders. They often get one really, really good season and then fall to shambles as the lack of consistency, injuries, or motivation and low energy take over.

LONG ANSWER:

If the goal is purely to run the best time possible, at let's say 5k and longer, you're going to want to be fairly low in muscle, and as lean as possible.

What those two things mean is INDIVIDUAL. If you try to mold yourself to look like another runner, you're being foolish and will almost certainly end up unhealthy or injured. Don't do it. Different people carry muscle differently, and have different proclivity towards how much they have. A runner built like a Solinsky who decided he looked heavy and tried to starve or immobilize himself to trend towards a Kiprop would be headed for disaster.

In addition, people carry body fat differently, again both in amount AND distribution. Don't expect to look exactly like another lean runner. Also realize that different people naturally handle different levels of leanness better. Some individuals can comfortably hang out at 8-9% year round. others start to feel weak as they push below even 11-12%.

How does one figure out the correct place then? Do you have an already muscular frame, or especially have intentionally before built muscle? Step one is to make a point to reduce gym training or extensive heavy lifting. This doesn't mean do nothing, but you don't need a massive growth stimulus.

From there, it's more or less a matter of weight loss with healthy nutrition. Get your 0.8g-1g of protein per pound of body weight each day. Eat quality, filling foods. Snacking occasionally is fine. The weight will probably start to drop if you do that. If it doesn't, then you might have to think a little bit about calories, and make some subtle restrictions, especially from the carbohydrate side.

If you're dropping weight and feel good, still performing, not getting sick, not feeling weak consistently (everyone feels weak occasionally on a diet and getting close to race weights), etc. then keep doing what you're doing. If you hit a point where the above negatives start happening; e.g. you start feeling week all the time, getting injured easily, getting sick more than you see as typical, massive hunger issues, and not performing consistently in workouts....that is your signal.

That's the "I'm getting too lean" signal. Usually at that point you want to make a point to eat more for a week or two and make sure performance normalizes. Get back to where the workouts are consistent and you feel strong and fit, with good energy.

It's also possible to get those same negative feelings if you're kinda lean but not race weight (if you're far away, say 30+ lbs from race weight, you usually won't have too many energy problems), and are losing weight with a poor diet (insufficient nutrients) or have a good diet but are losing weight too fast (possible insufficient nutrients, definitely insufficient energy). In that case, scale can be a good guide. If you're consistently losing over 1lb/wk then take a look at the amount you're eating, it's probably too aggressive at this point. If you're losing less than 1lb/wk, then it could be an issue of diet quality.

As far as a range, my guess is that 90% of the population at 6ft and running lean will be between 135lbs and 155lbs. If you're less than that, you probably have an outlier build that trends towards a guy like Kiprop. If you're over or around 155, you probably have some time in the gym building muscle and/or have a naturally larger frame and greater muscle carried naturally.

Running, and this is heavy speculation here not based on anything I have read or a history of observations, might be a little different.

Running has genuine skill/technique/form components, as well as some mechanical response that happen in the ligaments and tendons. Faster running seems to benefit all of the above. A cyclist or rower for instance can do 3 months of nothing but easy volume at HR less than 65% of HRmax, and still put out a decent (but still definitely not peak) performance, and jump back into workouts quite easily. It seems to take runners longer. The engine is better, but the efficiency and mechanical changes in the body take a little more time to bring back.

This is part of the argument for keeping some speed in any running routine.

Threshold isn't easy running, but it's slower than race pace for several common distances. I'm guessing you're losing out on some benefit doing that.

I believe there is also some research that shows positive results in masters athletes for keeping in some very high intensity on a regular basis.

Although less common, especially amongst masters, for races shorter than 5k you absolutely still want some speed. Working at threshold does quite a bit to improve fractional utilization of VO2, and can see improvements in VO2, but it does very little to stimulate the anaerobic work side of things. Even for a miler that isn't the focus, but it's a piece that needs at least a few weeks of attention if you want to be in peak shape for 1500m/mile.

That said, you have to balance with injury risk. If you know that fast, hard stuff gets you injured super easily; then the cost/benefit analysis might not tip in it's favor. Or you might find you can get by with 1-2 weeks of sharpening right before a key race. Or perhaps you find that if you still run fast, but keep the rest time a bit longer so that you're working fast, but not hard, you don't get injured as much. It just seems to vary athlete to athlete.

Parsec, thanks, another excellent post.

Yes, I've got an acceptable working knowledge of the range of running workouts.

I'm coming *back* over from cycling. Was a runner first, had a long injury that I couldn't figure out and switched to the bike and ended up enjoying a new challenge, but now coming back to running with the increased bike fitness for hopefully some solid PRs, and also because it's not the greatest thing for health (bone density) to be on the bike exclusively.

Sounds like you came to running late. I mentioned one of the posts that for those that don't have a running history, doing nothing but easy mileage, while great for building the aerobic engine can have some negative effects.

Most people that don't pick up running until after 20, and especially after 30, tend to have lost touch with good running form. Going out and running very easy lends itself to being lazy. Lazier, sloppier, less crisp stride; and only reinforces other poor movement patterns.

I wouldn't recommend it. My preferences is to have newer runners do primarily the easy running, but still some "workouts". They are fast, but not hard. Usually this means anywhere from 50m to perhaps 400m, usually with lengthy recoveries that allow for each rep to be started fresh and thus not hard. These harder efforts almost always beget significantly less lazy technique. The bounce and ground contact time naturally self correct, and you start developing better movement patterns and muscle memory.

"Hard" workouts, with the goal of improving aerobic/anaerobic capabilities, I think you're okay if you go a period without. As you mention, variety matters. Some runners would get bored to tears if all they did were a few short repeats and 95% easy running, and in those cases mixing it up with a moderate workout once a week makes sense.

I hope this goes without saying, but obviously this all applies farther out from a goal race. 3-4 months out you want to start having solid workouts with a clear progression over the cycle.

[quote]KCgeezer wrote:

I don’t pay super close attention to my easy run times, but I certainly have worn the strap long enough to know what kind of effort produces what kind of HR. And based on that I typically turn out 8:15-8:45 easy runs when I’m feeling frisky and 9, 10, even 11 minute miles otherwise. There’s nothing I enjoy more than a super slow easy run, based on the most effort I can muster, the day after a kickass workout.

That's interesting! Especially the last sentence. Those are, and I kid you not, some of the hardest "workouts" for me. I almost always find I'm either not that tired and really have to hold myself back, or really cracked from the previous effort, and while it doesn't feel hard per se I'm just tired/sore and it doesn't feel good to run.

I dislike it enough that I do recovery days almost exclusively on the bike now if I notice I'm actually beat up. Maybe a stride or two after. Personally and subjectively, this actually feels better recovery-wise.

So if you’re over workouts, fine, don’t do them. But you can always benefit from workouts. They might not even impact your mpw (I often log higher mileage on workout days which makes up for the 6 I log the day after). I can’t believe you wouldn’t boost your fitness, and you’ll be glad for that when you start racing again.

Exactly, yet people on this forum think I am running my easy runs too slow even though I am running around 75-80% of MHR during my easy runs.

How do they think you are running them too slow? Surely people aren't advocating 80+ % of HRmax on here as a typical easy run pace. If so, that's outright stupidity and I don't know where they got it from. I've never heard anyone advocating 80+% HRmax as an easy day in, day out pace.

If that conclusion is based on your current PRs, especially if they are shorter distance PRs (5k and under) then it's coming from the simplistic correlation of 5k to pace. It's a good correlation, but works better the more aerobically developed (and just how much you are aerobically tuned vs anaerobically tuned). HMP works better for this, but even then is not perfect. It's still susceptible to the above, just lessened effect.

Take two 5k runners, both having run 18:43 5k, 6:00 pace. One of these guys is a diehard, masters marathoner runner who has been running high mileage for two decades. The other is a young HSer focusing on the mile.

Masters guy could easily have a threshold pace of 6:15-6:20. The HS athlete might literally have a threshold pace over 7:00/mile. The HS athlete is getting a MASSIVE portion of his output for the race from his higher anaerobic capacity necessary for being a decent miler. The masters athlete has a very small anaerobic capacity due to age and that being a diesel with a large aerobic engine and low anaerobic capacity is a large chunk of what makes a good marathoner.

Threshold represents the maximum aerobic steady state, and so it's clear from that alone that these two athletes shouldn't run easy, aerobic efforts at the same pace. Masters guy is probably looking at 7:30-8:00 pace for nice easy runs, HS miler is probably looking at 9:15-10:00 pace.

That difference is bigger than the threshold difference between the two of them, which is something I never observed until the bike. You can have two athletes with the same threshold and same HRmax, but the other one has lower HRs across the board. This is because even threshold isn't purely aerobic, it has buffering and other anaerobic components. In running, you also have variances in efficiency with pace as well.

What is clear to me from all athletes I have worked with, and those that I have observed, is that when you bring the easy efforts to a nice light 60%-70% of HRmax, athletes get MUCH faster at these paces over the course of 4-6 months, oftentimes to the tune of 1:00 or more per mile, sometimes even 3:00 or 4:00 min/mile in newer, slower runners.

These improvements, usually, but not always, translate into faster threshold running times at first. They ALWAYS translate to both better threshold paces AND race times after a proper 3-4 month race build cycle.

I've yet to see an athlete move to easier paces for his aerobic volume and not get noticeable better.

Actually, I take that back.

It happened once, but the guy went really extreme. He didn't just go easy. He went to brisk walking levels, mostly around 50% or so of HRmax.

Yea.....

Doing runs at 90-95bpm with a maxHR of 190. 16:30 5k doing runs at 12 to 15 pace was a bit painful. He didn't make any progress. Not surprising though because their does seem to be a minimum for aerobic benefit to be realized and flip the "ON" switch, and that seems to be 55%-60% of HRmax.