The Zone 3 Insane Runner: Constantly training the same each day and expecting different results.

 Do you find yourself struggling to improve your run performance despite consistent training sessions, chances are you are in the dreaded Zone 3 plateau? Here’s how to bust out of this rut, avoid overtraining and reach your running potential.

The Zone 3 plateau means you’re probably pushing too hard too often, and not running slow enough often enough. It doesn’t matter your pace, slowing down to go faster is the real deal. Running consistently the same pace for training is going to put you into a Zone 3 plateau.  Yes, consistency is important to your training, but variety is important to success.

For runners, there is nothing better for you than slow Zone 2 base running. Many runners push the Zone 2 work out of the way in favor of Zone 3 work because they fall into the trap that running harder more often will lead to better results. However, Zone 3 work is above aerobic pace and has some lactate response, which means that it isn’t hard enough to elicit a desirable physical adaptation, and yet it’s too hard to allow for day-to-day recovery.

Constantly pushing in Zone 3 day after day is a habit of the time-crunched runner, where mileage and average pace is their only validator of training. This athlete can often find themselves in a rut and left wondering how they could work so hard for so little results

The first rule is that you want to keep your easy days truly easy, and your hard days hard. An easy hour in Zone 2 will always provide a better benefit than a moderately hard Zone 3 effort for that same hour. You want to create a schedule that allows you to run easy days in Zone 2 to illicit a recovery response, increase aerobic capacity, and increase fatty acid usage. The latter is a major benefit of Zone 2 running, true aerobic running will make you a better fat burner. Zone 3 running will leave you burning a mixture of carbs and fat, never making you super-efficient at being a carb burner or fat burner.

Simply put, your hard days should be hard! With a high heart rate in Zone 4/ Zone 5 for increasingly longer periods (in accordance with your race goals). There is no major benefit to be gained from Zone 3 when you could be doing high-end Zone 4 and Zone 5. The benefits for speed, lactate endurance and metabolism are maximized when you’re doing top-end Zone 4 and Zone 5 work. This is where you become efficient at mitigating lactic acid, more efficient at burning carbs, and thereby reach your optimal performance.

The first thing an athlete adopting this methodology needs to do is to throw away their “average pace” ego. Validating a run based on average pace alone is a dangerous proposition, leading you directly into a hard run at the cost of recovery and adaptation. The two best things you can do are to invest in a heart rate monitor and calculate your pace zones based on a recent race effort.

Every hard day should be followed by one or two days of easy running!

If you’re desperate to break through and you’re pushing yourself to the brink run after run, try taking a “run slower to get faster” approach to your running. Your mileage may be lower at first but the aerobic benefit you’ll receive will outweigh the loss in mileage.

Look at this young runner. 

She’s pretty fast and yet she sticks to the 80/20 principle. 80% of her runs are much slower than her race pace and 20% of her runs are hard days. She really prefers the very slow end on her long run days to allow for adequate recovery from her hard days and increase her aerobic base.

80/20 Zone Buster In Review:

1.) Distance runners need LOTS of easy miles and some intense miles to build the aerobic base.

2.) Easy miles are not anywhere near race pace. (2 to 3:30 slower than a 5K race pace).

3.) Easy miles should be done at the same cadence as hard days (180 steps per minute) CONSISTENCY!

4.) Easy miles are building your aerobic base so you can run farther with less effort.

5.) Hard miles are building power, activating fast twitch muscles, and refining race pace.

6.) Zone 3 used correctly is tempo and some speed workouts. Just not ALL the time.

7.) Staying in Zone 3 increases your chances of injury and hurts race day performance.