[yuryshafirin]

My recent TP is 4:10 per km. I did full 30 mins test and averaged at this pace. In another topic I asked if 30 mins based test is still actual as I see it was replaced with 20 mins test. So I will ask my question assuming I still can rely on the good old test. 4:10 TP gives me Zone 4 4:05-3:37. I am little confused with RP2 workout description requiring me to run that segment:
===
2 min @ 03:37-04:05 min/km
Zone 4-Zone 5
Run this segment at the fastest pace you could sustain for 30 minutes, which falls toward the low end of Zone 4.
===
I just run 30 mins at 4:10 and this was after couple of unsuccessful attempts where I started little too fast at about 4:00. So I am sure that at the moment I cannot drop even 5 seconds from my current TP to reach the lowest end of Zone 4 and under no circumstances I can do 4:00 or faster.

So who is wrong? Your calc, TraningPeaks or me trying to be too precise on the workout requirements? I actually noticed this a long time ago, but just followed the workouts. I remember when on marathon L2 plan I could do all workouts as prescribed, but failed to sustain the last progression run. So the plan was doable, but would great to get some clarity on this.

[leyla@8020endurance.com]

Hi there,
so if you held 4.10 per/km for your last test then that would be a good place to aim for when you see Zone 4 efforts. There is so much variability in all of this – you tested on just one day, you train on many others., you tested in a certain terrain and temperature and will most likely do your sessions in another – so it is impossible to be always perfectly within these upper pace targets all the time. No-one is wrong, as Matt would say, “you need to use horse shoe and hand grenade accuracy with these metrics” at the end of the day if it felt like zone 4 and a pace you could hold at for 30mins going strong – then you are the most right of them all..

Leyla

[yuryshafirin]

Hi Leyla,

Thank you for you answer. The confusion is that according to the calc TP is the high end of Zone 3, not the low end of Zone 4 and there is the Zone Y in between. I understand that there are a number of factors impacting runner’s performance. Once I ran this test in a too good condition – well rested prior to starting a new training cycle – and I got a TP that gave me zones that were too difficult sustain first month or two. So now I test when I am at least a month into training cycle carrying some fatigue from previous weeks. Still it depends on how I feel on that specific day and for accuracy I redo the test in a week or two. So the confusion is probably in the discrepancy between the calc and some workout descriptions – the high end Zone 3 is not the low end of Zone 4. What would help in my opinion is having a table giving more details on what each zone means: number of minutes you can sustain it, % of your performance. Maybe each zone description needs to be further subdivided as amount of time you can sustain a pace can vary within the zone a lot. In fact, some of the workouts (and unfortunately not all of them) have the description saying how many minutes I should sustain the pace and that information makes even more sense to me for finding the right pace for a specific interval on a given day. Of course I am talking about Zones 3, 4 and 5. Zones 1 and 2 are clear.

Yury

[leyla@8020endurance.com]

Yury,
my feedback for your pacing for these Zone 4 effort right now was based on this comment you put above:
“I just run 30 mins at 4:10 and this was after couple of unsuccessful attempts where I started little too fast at about 4:00. So I am sure that at the moment I cannot drop even 5 seconds from my current TP to reach the lowest end of Zone 4 and under no circumstances I can do 4:00 or faster”

I am not contradicting the workout as they are structured but was attempting to give you some guidance given that you were having trouble hitting those the Zone 4-paces. Aiming for your TP pace if that feels attainable for the Zone 4 segments is a good target as you work on this element of your fitness.. So while your TP is not the bottom of zone 4 – if it is the highest pace you can hold for these segments then so be it for now. Either your TP is set too high, or your ability to run at these paces has not been developed just yet.

Hope that explains my comment a little more.

This resource also provides further information on each of the zones:

Understanding Your 80/20 Run Plan

Cheers
L

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