[tommytortoise]

Hello 80/20

In Mid October I started the maintenance plan. Completed it in January and started my level 1 Marathon plan January 23. HR based using my HM race in October in the zone calculator.

My question is about fitness. I use Runalyze, Strava and Intervals.iu. All three say the same thing. My fitness peaked early February and has dropped since then. I have followed and completed every planned run in the program to date.

Marathon training anxiety is a thing, and having all 3 sites saying that I’m getting worse has me concerned.

[David Warden]

T, thanks for using our plans.

Short answer: are you getting faster? If you did a 5K TT are you faster now than before? If so, those estimated fitness formulas clearly wrong. Think of it as your weather app saying it’s raining in your area when it’s actually sunny. Those fitness trackers are just estimates, your speed is an outcome.

Long answer: check out this article https://www.8020endurance.com/your-performance-management-chart-is-lying-to-you/ It was written for the TrainingPeaks PMC, but it will apply to your other applications.

Remember, fitness trackers have two major drawbacks. One, they are gamified to promote hard workouts from you and two, they can only measure volume, so intensity becomes king to measure fitness. When you have a hammer (volume) everything looks like a nail (intensity).

David

[tommytortoise]

Thanks for the link. I have read it a few times now. Interesting stuff. The article brought up another concern… The PMC Cannot Reflect Specificity. I do very little at what I think my marathon pace should be. Will all the zone 2 training overcome that?

[David Warden]

The specific marathon plan will introduce more and more time at race pace. For you, race pace might actually be high Zone, but for most athletes is low zone X. Again, the plan will walk you through some race-specific pacing within training.

David

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