I’ve been thinking about how my intensity distribution is lacking high intensity work while following the Athletica plan. I’ve been very consistent now for most of this year, generally doing 6 workouts per week including 2 interval sessions. I’m training for a half marathon on the medium volume plan. Below you can see the current intensity distribution of my workouts: 78% low intensity and 22% moderate intensity, and 0% high intensity.
For my threshold workouts (nx1km) I’m mostly just below threshold which is moderate intensity in this distribution. For the HIIT hill intervals, since they’re only 100m they’re alactic and don’t raise my heart rate very much, especially since the rest periods are 2 minutes long.
Finally I have MIT intervals of nx2 minutes hard with 1 minute easy, these are the ones that get my heart rate up the most, but since they’re done on the back of the previously mentioned hill intervals and after I’ve been running for over an hour already, I’m unable to hold a HR above threshold for very long for these intervals. There are also just so many of them (usually 14x) that I feel I can’t push much beyond my threshold if I want to be able to do them all. So my question is basically: is this intensity distribution as intended or should I have more high intensity work?
Hi @casy,
Just looking over your plan and profile, and especially your MIT/HIIT session where you have your opportunity to hit your high intensity work. I have no doubt you’re getting benefits, but as a point to fine tune, you may want to reduce the number of sprints slightly to lower the neuromuscular contribution/stress in order to work at a slightly higher intensity (speed and HR) for the longer interval part of your workout (graph attached blinded to data). Note that the workout reserve of this session hits zero right at the end suggestions your progression has been perfect. When we look to the specificity of your race, the half marathon is often performed successfully following a pyramidal or threshold based plan as you are doing (see Andy Jones and I talking on the Training Science Podcast). My belief is that you are training very well for this but the test will be the race. Would appreciate you coming back to us and telling us how it went after you’ve completed it. Best of luck.
I also feel very good about my training and I’m enjoying the Athletica program a lot which makes it easy to stay consistent and keep doing the work I am confident I’ll do much better this year than last when it’s time to race, my B race is coming up in 2.5 weeks so looking forward to that test.
Last year I bonked and finished at 1:48, this year I’m sure I’ll finish below 1:40 and probably closer to 1:35.
I do plenty of high intensity and moderate intensity work but it is not showing up as such on their insight tool. I don’t know why. Perhaps the way their thresholds are defined (I do three sports and HR thresholds vary between swim, bike and run), so detection may be a bit off there. I also don’t go HR when doing intervals because of the inherent HR response lag.
The hill sprint+2kin intervals workout is brutal but very effective based on my experience as coach with my athletes.
When you are doing 1k efforts, remember your heart rate has bit of a lag: so if solely looking at heart rate response, you are not accumulating that much time above threshold but if you ask the rest of the body (lunges/respiratory muscles, leg muscles) whether they are working hard, I’d like to think they’d scream: “heck yeah!”
It is always the whole body as a system; and sometimes tools just don’t pick that up. For example: hill sprints; you are working really hard but your pace may be slower than on flat and your heart rate stays lower because the duration is shorter. If a tool is looking at the metrics only- it would probably indicate lower load than what you internally feel. Athletica uses Normalized graded pace but HR is what HR is… it doesn’t show neuromuscular load either. Incorporating Workout Reserve has helped me to keep track of my progress. I know when i’m hitting close to new records: I really love it.
I think if you are doing a mix of two intervals a week and some z2&3 work, and you can stay consistent, I think you are on the right track. I don’t know your age but trashing yourself with really high intensity can lead to overdoing it and illness/injury. It’s always best to be a little more conservative and keep ticking off little bit everyday/
I hope your half marathon goes well! Let us know how it goes!
Thanks for the feedback @Marjaana ! I think you’re right that hrv4training misses a lot of the high intensity work we do in longer workouts, probably because it looks at average heart rates and not minute by minute. Even for my threshold workouts where I spend quite a bit of time just below threshold, my average HR ends up 20-30 beats below that because the workout is so long and includes a lot of slow running during the warmup, recovery and cooldown phases.
I also think you’re spot on in saying the metrics don’t pick up the whole load on the body, and workout reserve is useful indeed in showing whether I’ve actually pushed myself harder than previously, and I have been seeing negative workout reserves on a regular basis.
I certainly appreciate the way Athletica doesn’t trash me completely with high intensity workouts that leave me struggling to recover, at 42 with two small daughters that wake me up several times every night and start the day at 5AM it’s been essential
Those WR negatives are awesome to keep an eye and celebrate when they happen! Sometimes when we are training for something it can be like training in blind as it’s hard to tell if we are improving or not. But WR gives you a little High Five and pat on the back.
Yes, kids waking you up several times a night. You definitely don’t need long hard sessions to trash yourself. I’ve been there and it was not pretty. Keep doing those short 30/30 as a little reminder : oh, this is what it feels like to go hard, and then back off. When your sleep is interrupted, your recovery takes longer.
Glad you are enjoying Athletica. Let us know if you have questions
I am confident I’ll do much better this year than last when it’s time to race, my B race is coming up in 2.5 weeks so looking forward to that test.
