05.06.2019 It's Monday

The sun is finally shining here in southern New Hampshire! Gotta enjoy it while I can, there's more rain coming.

30 min run today, mostly Zone 2 with 6 x 1 min intervals dipping into Zone 3. It feels so painfully slow to train this way!

Beautiful weather here today, too. Highs in the mid 70's and brilliant sun. 1650 yard swim this morning; 31 minutes and change of running this afternoon in a big park and then (after being chased off by aggressive, hissing Canada geese--seriously. They are breeding there and the males are defending the females and offspring, apparently) along the bike path instead. My quads feel like I've never run a step in my life. Can't be sore from biking as I have been doing that 6X a week for the past six weeks. It's got to be getting back to running again. Nothing to do but go slow, take some walk breaks, and just build back gradually and consistently.

As for Z2, for me it really seems to depend on the sport and the conditions. Did you set your zones with a threshold test? In general I find that for biking, the zones work pretty well. I mostly bike indoors on the trainer (and don't tend to use HR when I do ride outside, anyway) where conditions don't vary that much, at most by 10-15 degrees winter to summer. Z2 for me really corresponds to a kind of all-day effort that isn't just noodling along, but that I could sustain for several hours. Probably IM bike pace in my case. Often I am in Z1 heart rate at the lower ends of Z2 power.

Running really varies with heat/humidity, and other random things like caffeine, hydration, time of day and how I'm feeling that day. Especially in the morning and in cool weather, it takes quite a brisk effort to get me even into Z2. Later in the day and in hotter weather, I am there much faster. (I set the run zones I have now with a threshold test where temps were in the 90's with 90% humidity--a 5K-ish charity run in Saigon.) I really felt like those zones were off when I lived in Saigon for most of the year and then came home occasionally and trained in Oregon, where I usually ran in conditions that were 30-40 degrees cooler, even in summer (mornings can be nippy). In cooler conditions I actually had to run quite hard to hit "Z2" heart rates. I probably need to set separate zones for extended training in a cooler climate.

Since I am now in somewhat of the same boat as you with running (trying to get back to it after 10 or 11 weeks off), it would be interesting to see what HR is doing. I have checked it sometimes on trainer rides and, while it was high the first few weeks, now seems in the normal range for power and duration (i.e. Z2 HR yields mostly mid to high Z2 power). Clearly the run fitness isn't there--don't know if that would affect HR or just leg fatigue/efficiency/recovery.

Edited by Hot Runner 2019-05-06 8:27 PM

Another easy trainer session for me just to keep the blood flowing. About 35 minutes of easy spinning but picked up the intensity some towards the last 10% of the ride.

I think you’ll find your body will adapt to Z2 training pretty quickly being that you have a history of training. Make sure your zones are accurate as well.

 

I did a 30 minute Threashold test in the early morning on the same trail that I do my morning training (lots of hills).  Yes, on cool mornings it takes quite a brisk effort to get me into Z2.  Last summer I was doing recovery runs over my lunch break.  Some days it was over 100 deg F and humid.  On those runs my focus was to see how slow I had to run to keep my heart rate from going over Z2.  It took a few weeks of slowing down even more every time before I found my pace.  It was 40 sec/mile slower than my morning pace and my afternoon run didn't even have the hills that my morning runs do.

Edited by BlueBoy26 2019-05-06 10:27 PM

Sounds like trying to stay in Z2 in Saigon--that could be very difficult! In a few cases (usually long runs or brick runs, since, by definition, those would finish up later in the morning when it's hotter) I would have to walk for 30-60 seconds to get HR out of Z3. I finally told my coach I just didn't want to do workouts in Saigon where I would do continuous tempo running for over 15-20 minutes without walk or jog breaks, because I would get sometimes so overheated I'd get nauseous and dizzy (once recorded a HR of 190 on a tempo run). And that was when I was in excellent run shape. It worked better to do shorter, harder repeats with some recovery to cool down a bit.