So I have recently (6 weeks ago) returned to regular running (or any regular exercise really) after a long break. I’m a male nearing 50.
I’ve been training with Athletica for two weeks now in the train to maintain mode, just having finished my test week. I have some weeks of base training ahead of me, but this is to be expected given where I am.
I seem to have a huge discrepancy between the Z2 pace and hr: Athletica has fixed my top of Z2 at 125 bpm, which for me seems to be a pace of 11:30/km (!). The Z2 pace according to the model is supposed to be at 7:48.
on the other hand if I were to run at at 130 bpm I seem to get a pace of around 7:50-8:10. I don’t really understand physiology enough to judge why there is a such a big difference.
so currently I can either “run” my easy runs at 11:00 pace, keeping in the HR zone as suggested by Athletica, or run at the pace suggested by the model, but with a higher heart rate. I can easily go on for 1h+ at this 130 bpm heart rate, and this is what I think is the conversational pace. The AI coach then shouts at me for being in Z3 and shortens the following workouts.
What is likely to be more beneficial over the next couple of months of base building? I would prefer to run at the faster pace, but there apparently is some magic that happens at low hr I wouldn’t want to miss out on…
@Wigster, I do not know what’s right in terms of numbers and I am new to AAI myself … but 11 min/km is very slow, essentially walking😉 As you seem to have an idea of what you can do as “base workouts” I would simply go ahead and do that, I.e., run at your conversational pace for a duration you find convenient. Take the training plan as a guideline on distribution of training across the week, but do harder/longer in light of the “previously seen” prescriptions. But be sure not to overdo it according to feel.
Let the AAI shout at you for a while, it will not get upset, and it should adjust to your actual capabilities and physiology.
Doing some short hard efforts could help, but it is really individual, cannot be judged here, whether that is a good idea for your current state.
Agree with this - I think looking at the specifics of a Z2 / Aerobic run is quite difficult. Some days a pace can feel very easy, some it can feel hard. If you go by feel / RPE and then advise the AI Coach afterwards how you felt then it should learn.
Welcome back to training!
Did you do your 5K TT? Did your thresholds update?
You can manually change your threshold settings at Overview - Athlete Zones - Critical Pace & Critical HR.
As you tick off your training runs, the system is always assessing your thresholds (in fact, every night), so you will see updates. Note that for the critical HR and Pace to change, you need to give a honest effort ideally around 10-20min long (and with honest, I mean a HARD effort).
There are couple of good checks to stay aerobic:
conversational pace
nose breathing (hard for some people)
use walk run method. the split of walk&run depends, but you could start with 5-10mins run, and walk 1 min.
Nothing wrong with going slow on aerobic runs, but I get 11min/km may be frustrating …
Let me know how your 5KTT went, or if you need any help with setting your thresholds.
Marjaana
Yeah I run the 5k test and managed 32 minutes. HR and pace were slowly increasing through the whole period, I finished on 175 bpm, so I think this is a reasonable estimate of the most I can do today. This test brought my critical HR from 158 (the COROS estimate from the last six weeks I put in by hand) down to 150, and it’s oscillated between 150 to 152 for the least few days. I have resigned to the fact that this is correct. The critical pace is at 6:40 and I think this is correct for the 150 bpm average HR and 30 mins as per the 5k test.
I guess the issue is that I can run for an hour plus at around a 7:30 pace but the HR will drift a lot, so this is above my Z2. However the pace recommendation seems to be calibrated from the the pace vs duration curve.
there is the alternative Karvonen estimate of aerobic threshold hr which for me ends up at 139 bpm, and closer to the 7:30 pace. But the HR drift here is huge.
The MAF HR (adjusting by -5 for being untrained) of 127 (ie the 125 bpm being suggested by Athletica is pretty close) is more conservative and still drifts. The pace is extremely slow but everything I read tells me this is the important issue to deal with initially. And I should ignore the Ai complains that I didn’t go the distance. So should I just do that and ignore everything else?
In fact this is my current zones table, with top of Z2 at 125 bmp. I see that top of Z5 which I understand is supposed to be HR max is only 163, despite my having recorded 175 a few days ago and have spent at least the last kilometre of the 5k in the mid to high 160s.
Then 125/163 =0.767 and I think it’s supposed to be 82%. I guess this is some sort of fit to multiple things. But is something going wrong here?
