lightheir wrote:
SnowChicken wrote:
At 2 hours of running in zone 2 you are supposed to be fairly fatigued by the end of it But you also shouldn't need to be doing anything extra to maintain focus on the pace.
Ignoring heart rate for a second how does this pace compare to your PR's? the way you describe it makes it sound like you may be close to your marathon pace/effort, is that correct?
Doing 2 hours at marathon pace weekly is a big ask and you would probably benefit from slowing it down by 10-20 seconds per mile. it should still line up with zone 2 heart rate but also not be overly strenuous
My Z2 run pace in min/mile lines up roughly with the Mcmillan calculator results if I plug in a 19:30 5k (I'm likely faster than that, my last 5k was 18:50 but that was in race shape), it gives me a wide range of 7:20-8:35/mi for 'easy RPE2-4' efforts.
Honestly, I'd peg the RPEs of my Z2 runs at 4-5 in high z2, 3-4 in low z2, but definitely not 6 or up. So even though it's 'surprisingly hard' for me, it's not like I'm really pushing hard.
It's entirely possible I'm running my 2 hr runs at near 'marathon pace' given my current fitness (on only <30mp) but I seem to be recovering fine and not limited (thanks to the reasonable 80/20 plan.)
That said, the range of Z2 varies a lot for pace and HR, so I definitely take advantage of it - I will run low z2 or even high z1 if I'm feeling a bit beat down, and take it up to hi z2 if I'm feeling pretty good.
I'm doing the 80/20 Oly Advanced plan right now, and it doesn't get you much more than 30mpw runinng, so I'm not surprised that I feel like I'm running overall faster than I did when I was doing pure marathon training at 70mpw and doing a LOT of z1 work. Z2 feels a lot harder than Z1 for me (even though I wouldn't call z2 a 'hard' effort!)
Honestly a lot of what you just said seems reasonable. Recovering is good and adjusting the pace when you feel beat down is good policy for staying healthy and fresh in running. I think its smart to be running off feel a lot in running with some general goals in mind and knowing what your limits are. If you know that you have a tough workout the next day and you know that hitting 7:30 miles for an hour will drain you it might be a good idea to err on the side of caution and run 8 minute miles so you are fresh for your harder effort the next day.
for reference I just put my estimated 5k PR into mcmillian calculator and I am basically always in the lower half of that range for my general aerobic easy runs. But those runs have been trending faster as I get fitter and continue to run more. The upper end of that range is what I would anticipate my marathon pace to be though.