Week 1: Zone 2 Training

My first week of zone 2 training has been interesting. As mentioned previously, I have my spreadsheets to track my running and my weight to control for any weight loss, but I am not sharing any of that for a while, because I don’t have any results to share yet. What I am going to share will be my week of training, how it felt, and anything I noticed or found helpful.

Monday: Zone 2 run. I wrote about this with my first zone 2 running post, so I will not go into much detail. I walked a lot, and I let my heart rate settle down to zone 1 when walking.

Tuesday: Nothing. I felt tired, and unmotivated. I did a lot around my house though.

Wednesday: 45 minute zone 2 bike. It was sort of zone 2, but I was on a hilly route, so I let my heart rate climb up a little during the climbs and settled back into zone 2 on the descents and flats. I have to pay close attention on descents to keep it from dropping too much. This means shifting up a gear or two and keeping my cadence up.

Thursday: Swim in the middle of the day. I felt pretty good and had time to get in some extra distance, so I made it 3300 instead of my planned 3000. I also had another zone 2 run that afternoon. I felt like I ran a little more in the beginning compared to Tuesday, but less near the end. One of the recommendations I got from Triathlon Taren is to run more to improve efficiency on the run, so I am aiming for 3-4 runs per week right now.

Friday: Swim in the morning. This was another 3000 with some speed in it. I back off a lot on speed workouts due to an old shoulder injury at the moment, so anything “sprint” or “all out” is actually just strong. I also did 30 minutes of stretching and core work in the evening. As I mentioned in Triathlon Training and Tax Accounting I am planning on trying to focus on strength and mobility to prevent injury.

Saturday: I was super tired Saturday morning, probably from my early morning to swim Friday, so I slept in before working at the bike shop for the day. When I got home from working, sleeping in meant I had to get in my 1.5 hour bike ride. I picked a pretty hilly route for it, which I do a lot on Zwift, and I like that choosing hilly routes means I think less about speed and more about heart rate and the purpose behind the workout. My heart rate still got a little high on a couple hills, but it was returning very nicely when I slowed down, which is a good sign.

Sunday: My long “run” day. I have found a shuffle that I can stay in zone 2 under the right conditions with. I ended up with a few extra minutes past the forty-five I planned for this workout, and it went very well, or as well as a run/walk when I really want to run can go. The really positive thing that has come from all of this is that I can do longer workouts without feeling like I am dying at the end. The distance may not be there yet, but the time is, so as I get faster (hopefully), my distance should build up without increasing time. Of course I am increasing time as well.

Overall, this last week went really well for me, and it felt good. I haven’t actually felt this good training in a while, and my current week is off to a good start. I think not working for two weeks has something to do with it, but I have also made a few other changes, like trying to eat better and taking a vitamin D and B12 supplement. The vitamin D is under the recommendation of my doctor and the B12 is just what else was in the one vegan vitamin D gummy I could find online.

This week I am starting to incorporate some intervals into one of my run and bike workouts each week. On the run it will be on my hard run day and will be heart rate based, while on the bike I am just going to continue with hillier routes, but also push a little bit more for short periods of time.

I am Trying Zone 2 Training

Like the title states, I am going to work on more zone 2 training, which is pretty doable for me on the bike, and I throw heart rate out the window on swimming no matter what, but the zone 2 running is a problem for me. I have worked off some older, but still roughly accurate numbers to calculate that to be in zone 2, my heart rate needs to be under 158 BPM. To put this in perspective of difficulty for me, my average heart rate is normally somewhere in the 170’s.

The first question some people may have is why I am choosing to focus on zone 2 training. There is a lot of research on zone 2 training for endurance athletes. Zone 2 is where you will build aerobic efficiency. By training at lower heart rates, over time you should be able to put out a faster pace at the same heart rate. It also means you will be able to go faster at heart rates above zone 2. If you want to learn more about zone 2 training, I will link some videos and articles I have found helpful at the end of this blog post.

Like I said, zone 2 cycling is not as difficult for me, especially with my trainer, so I will be able to easily crank out those workouts at home, but zone 2 running does not come naturally to me. I have gone for my first zone 2 run where I setup heart rate based alerts on my Garmin to tell me every time I hit zone 3, and it challenged me a lot more than I expected.

It was cool out, so I at least didn’t have to battle the heat, but after my first six minutes of running, I had to drop down to a walk to get my heart rate back into zone 2. I was shuffling more than running even before I started to walk, but I am trying to really stick to this, because this run, and the effort I put in on this run, made me realize that I may have never really trained in zone 2. I’ve honestly probably spent more time training in zones 3 and 4 on the run than I have ever spent in zone 2, even when training for my Ironman in 2016 (which sounds like forever ago as I write this).

The one thing that happened that I expected was that I went longer than I had planned. I ended up with about a thirty-five minute workout, when I wanted a minimum of twenty. I know this is from staying in zone 2, because zone 2 should be a conversational pace, and as I mentioned before, I now realize I probably never have trained in zone 2 on the run, because I’ve never just gone out and felt like I could go forever like this. Of course I was also walking a lot, but hopefully I will see the amount of walking go down as I continue my zone 2 training.

As a data nerd who has both Strava premium and Training Peaks, I decided I need to track this somehow to see if I make progress, and my inner accountant decided Microsoft excel is going to be the best way. I have my spreadsheet and basic data I am tracking. Total time and average pace. The thing I would like to see is for the average pace to begin to drop over time, keeping in mine that it can take three to six months to actually see results.

There are some things that could also impact what I see on this chart beyond just my running. I am currently focusing on self-care and eating healthier, so if I lose some of the weight I would like to get rid of, I should also see a decrease in my run times, because each step would take less energy. Weather can also impact heart rate, so when I get into the miserable summer months in Tennessee, I usually see my average pace slow down. Because I am not racing until December, I am more focused on base building than anything else at the moment, so I am probably going to focus more on these slower workouts than anything else.

If you are interested in learning about zone two training there are useful articles here and here. The second one is from Matt Fitzgerald discussing the 80/20 rule for intensity in training, which I am planning on reading his book about. I also recommend checking out Triathlon Taren’s videos on zone 2 training and running. I’ve watched a lot of his videos about zone 2 training, and he gives a lot of good advice about how to get started with it and keeping your heart rate down.