A question related this this topic: Wrong HR zone defined for me?, but I thought it’s best to open a separate thread…
I went to a lab to test my lactate levels, thresholds, and zones, and got my training zones and corresponding running paces. But this was in February, and I have trained quite a lot since.
Now my pace zones are consistently higher than the corresponding heart rate zones, like this:
I’ve adjusted some pace zones based on what garmin suggests, but I try to be conservative, and recently I adjusted the zones more based on the pace I had during a HM. But there again the issue is that my garmin tracked the run as 21.5 km, when it actually was a HM.
So how do you adjust your pace zones? Or do you mostly train based on HR instead?
My advice would be to not fiddle with the pace zone percentages and only change the Threshold pace.
Zones by lactate and HR don´t change dramatically in a year time. The performance at those physiological reference points, your pace, does change a lot. But percentage wise, with threshold pace as ref, the distribution remains similar.
If you do a lab test once a year to finetune the zones again, you will always be very close. Close enough for excellent training guidance.
Yes, but ideally, aren’t you supposed to get the same load from one exercise, both by using the HR and teh pace as method of load calculation? But maybe there is so much daily variation (especially in HR), that this is maybe just possible in theory.
It depends on the nature of the workout and the accuracy of the zone settings. If zones are set correctly, they will be similar, let.s say within about 10% for steady state workouts. If you do short sprints, they will vary wildly. Pace goes up instantly when sprinting, HR lags a lot and may never get to the highest zones. That causes the sometimes big differences.
