[andy]

Hi Everyone
I wanted to ask a few questions if anyone can help me please – literally stumbled upon 80/20 training in the last few days.

Coming back to running ater some time- and was progressing along with a couch to 5k plan, although even runninf for a couple of minutes felt hard

decided to try the
80/20 Running: 2023 Edition Free Sample 5K Level plan from this site – synced up to my coros watch and started today.

this was the schedule for today
5:00 in Zone 1
5:00 in Zone 2
6 x 0:20 in Zone 5/1:40 in Zone 2
10:00 in Zone 1

So Zone 1 according to my watch was 114-117 heart rate
and zone 2 was 117-130.

my warm up for 5 mins i walked – as anything over that set my HR into the red zone.
also with Zone 2 – i ran very slowly ( which was a new thing for me ) and even then had to revert to walking many times to bring the HR down below 130

Dont think i have looked at my wrist so much ever before !! constantly trying to keep within the suggested HR Parameters.

At the end i felt fine, and for once i felt like i could do this again the next day- as i was not knackered as usual!

so i guess that i wa always running too fast ? and needed to keep my running at more of an aerobic level.

is it normal to have to slow down to almost a fast walk -even in zone 2?

Many Thanks
Andy

[FatDad]

Hi,
one of the coaches may have a more authoritative answer, but the short answer is that yes 8020 is all about running most of the time within your capacity. When you start out you may well feel like you are fast walking a lot of the time.

The focus is on building the core fitness slowly. I did couch to 5K (using the plan that came with my watch) and then did another online plan that was too hard – queue months of shin splints and plantar fasciitis. So consistently building fitness is the key.

If you keep doing the time trial every 3 weeks you will see your progression.

On another point, generally HR is considered the least helpful metric with pace better and Power best. So you might want to try Pace. If you so a Simultaneous Test you can get your zones for HR and Pace (and Power if you have a Power device) in the same test, so you can try both and see what works.

As an example I have just come back from a 60 min zone 2 run. I definitely feel like I have had a run but I will not be sore for the speedwork planned tomorrow.

Use the lower zone runs to concentrate on your form and enjoy your surroundings/music etc.

[David Warden]

FatDad, you’re right on. Andy, you’ll also want to make sure that your zones are setup correctly. It’s likely that you’re just using the default TrainingPeaks zones and have not yet setup your custom 80/20 zones, which may be a bit higher. See our guide https://www.8020endurance.com/getting-started-with-80-20-training/ to ensure you’ve setup your plan correctly.

David

[Author]

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