[Tyler]

I know that in most cases I am supposed to include the recovery portion of a higher intensity interval set to count toward my mid-high intensity total for the week because of the way my heart rate remains elevated even as I am in the recovery portion of the set. But what do I do if the set is a Zone 3 intensity with a long recovery interval such as Run Workout RCI1 which has an interval of 3 x (5 minutes Zone 3/3 minutes Zone 1)? I feel that after about 30 seconds of entering into my Zone 1 recovery portion of the set my heart rate will be entering into the Zone 2 (low intensity) range. Should I still count the entire 3 minutes of recovery towards my mid-high intensity total even though a majority of it probably falls in the low-intensity zone?

[Matt Fitzgerald]

It doesn’t really matter, honestly. Nothing explodes if an athlete doesn’t spent exactly 20.0% of their weekly training time at a true physiological moderate/high intensity. That being said, if you plan your own training and you are asking the question for planning purposes, I would encourage you to count the full block as time above Zone 2 as we do.

[Author]

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