Monday 7 April 2014

Cut out the middle

In the ongoing recovery-injury cycle the physio has presented an important adversary. She's raised the problem before but not so clearly or starkly. Basically she feels I'm racing too much of my training.

She illustrated this with a traditional 5 zone training model and suggessted that much of my training is in zone 3. As a beginner this is maybe ok but as the training time increases it can be unsuitable. In zone 3 you will be working hard,  travelling fast and subjecting the musculoskeltal system to high loads for a long time once you've a good background fitness. However you're not gaining the benefits of high intensity training of zones 4 & 5. So, far better to spend time in zone 2 on long runs interleaved with tempo runs and intervals for improved handling of lactate.

That means that training runs will rarely result in a Strava segment award unless these have been 'cherry-picked'. There shouldn't be longish runs that just get faster. So now I'll have to make a conscious effort to SLOW DOWN to allow me to cover distance with hopefully less damage.

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