A bit more comprehensive. Interesting in the blog he said Mark used a complex formula!

I read the article, and it appeared to me that friel practically tripped over himself to avoid mentioning Maffetone or the MAF formula.

I plugged in the numbers, and for me Friel's Zone 2 is approximately 75% max HR (HR=140).  My MAF HR is 132. 

Mark Allens cycle reminded me of Lydiard Periodization.  Aerobic, Strength and then Speed.

Now that I have been at this for a few years now, I have come to appreciate Lydiard much more and the concept of periodization, etc.  I think in the beginning I neglected the higher aerobic zones and spent maybe too much time running at or below MAF.  It certainly did not hurt, but I really do see now that you get more optimal aerobic fitness from working in the upper aerobic zones too.

I used to go from a lot of low aerobic zone running (MAF pace) and then go straight into a racing season.  This year I have done a lot more 75% maxHR running and I think I benefited from it a lot.  I have also added strides and tempo runs, but not too much of it.  I also tried some interval stuff, but I do not think it benefited me that much.  I think it took too much out of me.

I recently started to do some up hill running.  Boy, I really like doing hill workouts.  I find that I recover from them much easier than from interval type work.  You really feel like you are working on strength rather than speed.  The strength eventually translates into improved speed, I think.

Next year I am going to try to follow Lydiard concept a bit more.  Last year I followed Lydiard to a point and liked it.  I know Lydiard is not very specific when referring to aerobic paces of a quarter, half and three quarter speed.  I decided to translate them to mean something like 70, 75 and 80% max HR where 70% is about MAF Pace.  These are all still pretty aerobic paces.

So, next year I plan to do an aerobic base phase that has a lot of these aerobic paces in it.  I find that I get the most benefit from about a 75% max HR pace, with the least cost for recovery.  I find that the MAF pace is also good to mix in there.  I then want to do a hill phase and a tempo phase, but I will skip the speed phase next year.

I am going to run one more 5k this fall, and then take it easy for a month or two, and then I am looking forward to another season.

Happy Holidays everybody.  It has been fun following everyones progress this year.

zone2 has an upper and lower HR limit, which one is 140? i.e. I'm asking what HR limits your zone2 is. as I said mine is 157-171 or so. and for me 75% of maxHR is 156.

oh and it is interesting how your MAF is just 70% of your max and it still works well for you!

anyway...I feel like I can run a lot at this zone2, a lot of times and for a long time at a time, but of course it's slightly more load on the body than a pace/HR below MAF. MAF(153) itself would be sort of like zone2, as long as I don't allow pace to drop (instead allow HR to increase, which means the first mile MAF pace is held and HR increases a couple of bpm's after a while).

NOTE: I checked out your pdf link and oops, this calculates the zones a bit differently than the other link I posted. I'm not sure why. the other link I posted gives me zone 1 at 156 and below. and this pdf says it would be under 85% of LTHR where LTHR is determined in the same way as with the other link. so, below 85% is below 165, not below 157, now I suppose the other link uses 80% instead of 85. why, though?
the other zones are basically the same though. OK, I realize now the other link used the bike zones, not the run zones, I see they are different. LOL.

now, the corrected zone 2 is 165-171, according to this, and while that is pretty easy I probably would not want to run this every single day. just like your 75% maxHR (though this is not 75% maxHR for me but 79-82% - at 75% I can run everyday!).

OK, I recalculated the HR zones and paces using your pdf and they work out pretty well. other sites that tried to match paces and HR's would go by maxHR % or HRR % and that just didn't match up. I guess my LTHR is a bit higher % than what the usual HR-pace formulas assume.
I'm really really loving how the friel stuff works for my pace vs HR relation. (the one thing I'm not sure about is how they define the aerobic and anaerobic capacity, though. I would like to think that the pace that comes out as anaerobic capacity is NOT that anaerobic for me, lol.)

on another note, you mention you would go race right after MAF base building. that did not seem to work for me too well. my shin usually wouldn't take the faster pace out of the box. it needs to get used to it. some slightly faster runs and then intervals are a nice way for this, it seems.

the other reason why this isn't optimal is that the base building is really just that, builds an endurance base with which your paces will improve - if they don't, something's wrong - but which also makes you ready for speed work to improve your paces even more. then after races you should be able to build more base on that (unless you raced too much and thus wore yourself down too much doing that).

I'll be curious to hear about how lydiard stuff works for you (mixing in several aerobic paces).

 

Zone 2 for me is HR = 141 to 148 or 76% to 80% maxHR.  My max HR is about 185 and I think my LT is about 166.

 

My opinion these days is that MAF pace running is good for recovery running or it is good as a base phase for someone who is overtrained or who is coming off of an intense racing season.   I think it is a good pace to run to increase your miles to a point that you would like.  I also think it is a good pace for some of us older people to use more often.

 

But, after that, I think you need to do a lot of Zone 2 running to continue to improve aerobic fitness and to get a good aerobic base, especially if you want to use the periodization method to get ready for racing.  I mentioned Zone 2, but really I think I mean doing a lot of running at 75% max HR and throughout the 70% to 80% max HR zone.  Most things I have read consider this 70 to 75% max HR zone a good aerobic zone with 80% being the highest you want to let your HR get to, and probably only toward the end of your run.

 

Lydiard pretty much says the same thing for his base phase, with his quarter, half and three quarter efforts.  He says that you can stay in this phase indefinitely and you will get optimal areobic gains from this.  And then, you can move into the other phases for racing, like strength, stamina and speed phases.  I like the idea of a MAF base phase to precide Lydiard base phase.

 

So, that is how I see it all for me these days. 

zone 2 for me is: from 79% to 82%, but that's fine for me as those maxHR % don't work for me anyway.  yes I did use MAF originally to come back from a bit of "overreaching" and it worked for that very well and also very well for building mileage base. but I think it was too low % of vo2max for me so it wasn't stimulating my body to build that much aerobic fitness. this thread's purpose was to see how other people's MAF was related to their vo2max pace. do you have any data of yours?

maybe it's also my age as I'm still hardly past 25... :P I look younger than 25 even though I'm 27 :P I mention age because I keep seeing older people's MAF is higher % of their LT than mine. however it did prepare me well with the mileage and I was able to run harder efforts no problem. actually no injury risk with the higher effort/higher HR running (intervals, etc). I found that amazing. this was partially because those hard runs are typically short.

 

My paces and percentage seem to match your example almost perfectly.  My MAF pace is about 10 min/mile and I probably could run close to a 6 minute mile for 5 minutes based on the fact that my best 5k is about a 7 min/mile.

nice data.

by the way... what I've been doing already seems to have my HR lower at the same easy pace. or, same HR at a "faster" pace which feels just as easy as the slower pace did before. so, that is nice to see!! though, paces faster than that are a bit of a problem right now. endurance surpassing speed ??? unbelievable for me... oops

 

Right off the bat, I find the 30-minute LT test that's supposed to be run like a race a bit dodgy. Unless you do frequent 30 minute races, how are you supposed to know how hard to run? I know I don't. A quote from the .pdf:

 

"Note: I am frequently asked if you should go hard for the first 10 minutes. The answer is yes. Go hard for the entire 30 minutes. But be aware that most people doing this test go too hard the first few minutes and then gradually slow down for the remainder. That will give you inaccurate results. The more times you do this test the more accurate your LTHR will become as you will learn to pace yourself better at the start."

 

It could take a LOT of tests before you know how to pace yourself, and it's a race, and if you're in a base period--not good.

 

Maybe Friel's methods are great. I won't know unless I give it a full go for a year and properly and see it through. Not sure it's an experiment I want to make though.

 

In the spirit of the fun you guys are having here,

My MAF is 133

My LT is 175 bpm

My 50/50% fat/sugar heart rate=148

 

Zone 1: 148 bpm

zone 2:  148-156 bpm

zone 3:  157-164 bpm

zone 4:  166-173 bpm

 

The rest are all above LT.

All are above my 50/50 point and would be anaerobic workouts, as I would be burning more sugar than fat. In MAF definitions, they are all above my MAF and are anaerobic workouts.

 

--Jimmy

Friel says that you can do the 30min test a few times to find your LT more precisely. after that, you maybe want to do it once a year or not even that often as LT HR is pretty stable after you're past the total beginner state. so, I don't see an issue here.

but then, I didn't need to do his test as I had a race that's pretty close for the LT test. of course significantly longer race than 30minutes.

but I knew my "Friel LT HR" anyway long before that race because I did a pretty hard 30mins a long time ago with a totally even pace (so I didn't screw up the pace for sure), and I had HR data from this run. the race just confirmed this HR.

the other interesting thing is that Friel does mention that base building should be "pure". :P

 nice about your zones. interesting how zone 2 starts right at 148 for you. I first had my zone 2 from 157 to 171 before realizing that was for bike HR zones. so it is really 165-171. I feel somewhat more comfortable at 157 than at 165 so I guess this could be more correct.

the zone 1 for me would be pretty close to MAF, but it does allow MAF+a few beats as ceiling. and I like it more that way because I feel no difference between 153(the 180-age MAF) and 157. and even after realizing it was bike zone, even 164 feels close to MAF for me. now, there IS a difference between 157-164 and 165+ as I already mentioned. and this is another reason why I find all this so interesting.

thing is I prefer running in this zone1 rather than zone2.   and see my post above where I say it seems I got some results from it. (that's a coincidence with zone 1, as I've never used his system.) so you don't have to play too much in zone2 to get results.

Friel also says that you can take full advantage of the zones, i.e. run in the low part or run in the high part or start in low part and end up in high part with HR drift.

did maffetone say anywhere that 50% sugar is the anaerobic switch point? isn't that only 0.85 RQ?

 

 

As far as Dr. Phil and his method is concerned, anything above your MAF is anearobic. You've engaged the anaerobic system.

Correct, on the RQ scale 50/50 is .85

 

Still think the 30 minute test could take awhile to get correct--each time you do it, you've actually run a very hard race. Perhaps, it's best to make it part of a race season, as you need at least 3-4 days recovery after the test. Theoretically, it could comprise a brief race season! If done in a base period, it could sabotage your aerobic progress.

 

--Jimmy

I suppose I got lucky by being able to assess what pace I could hold without slowing...but I agree not everyone may be able to do that. they could still just try and run a race in the race session that lasts about 1 hour.

about MAF vs anaerobic system I always thought Maffetone meant that as an increasing amount of sugar/glucose is being burnt, an increasing amount of it will be processed anaerobically (a.k.a lactate), this initially may be small, but it's there, and so his definition is a kind of lactate threshold though definitely not the same definition as used in the common way, which involves significantly higher levels of lactate, such as Friel's LT.

of course lactate is present even at complete rest and it is actually useful for a few things - I view lactate only as an indicator of the extent of anaerobic processes going on, it correlates well with that, not a harmful substance on its own (just to avoid any misunderstanding here).  

anyway, if we look at some example lactate curve (there's a few out there online), usually LT is defined as where the curve starts to really get steep. I always supposed Maffetone looked at the point where it just slightly increased. this is hard to get by just measuring lactate like 5 times in a stress test, RQ is measured constantly though, so that's probably better for finding this point.

so anyway...when Maffetone says some intensity is anaerobic, it may still be 95% aerobic, because sugar can and will be burnt using oxygen if the intensity is low enough but the anaerobically processed part is also there where sugar is processed without oxygen. right?

 

 

In all his books, his definitions of aerobic and anaerobic are not based on oxygen consumption or breathing, but the type of fuel being used, thus the fibers. The more you engage your fast-twitch fibers, the more anaerobic, the more sugar you burn. The more aerobic, the more fat. At a certain level of exertion sugar gets used in the mitochondria in the slow twitchers to burn the fat, but you aren't using any fast twitch fibers. The point they begin to get used just a tiny bit is at your MAF, the end of pure slow twitch and the beginning of both.  On a graph you would then see a steep rise in HR right after MAF as the anaerobic fibers get used. I'm not sure exactly how they determine anaerobic threshold or lactate threshold with the RQ test. The software said it was at .92 RQ or 175-176. According to the test, I was at 100% sugar at 189 bm (95% MHR).

  

My RQ test for a visual.

 

All this being said, and having done all this. I've simplified training to just staying below MAF for aerobic base periods, and

not going over 90% MHR more than a beat or two during anaerobic training (not doing more than 1-2 MAF+ runs in a week). And most importantly, do regular proper MAF tests.  I play around and experiment within those parameters as you know. I really don't think much about what the science is anymore. My MAF tests, resting heart rate, and how I am feeling pretty much tell me what to do from day to day in spite of my training schedules. Running science discussions can be great mental exercise, and I enjoy them on occasion, but they never really help me with improving--only experimentation and its success or failure has done that. All roads have led to MAF training and its periodization as being the best for me. In 5 years, I could be all-Friehl-all--the-time. Or maybe my heart-time experiment will make me a thousandaire on the running philosophy book circuit.

 

--Jimmy

interesting, that RQ test shows you should be fine adding 5 bpm to your MAF, no? it would be 138 then..

it is also very interesting to see that 148 HR in the test.

in a certain sense, 50%/50% sugar/fat is still pretty low intensity as it is still way below marathon intensity. but I can see what you mean by it being slightly more stressing because I can see the same with the 165-172 zone 2 in my case. so in this sense it is not that low intensity really...especially after one has already experienced the lower intensities and got addicted to them

anyway... you are right about experiencing what works and what doesn't. I just enjoy the theorizing too. and...if you ever make a book on heart-time let me know I'll buy it.

as for experimenting the fun thing is that I have a feeling that going over 90% of max is a pretty good stimulus for me to improve. and the other one something like the friel zone 1 but not too low because then it just doesn't have an effect. even funnier is my endurance improved pretty well doing these things, both over MAF, and the high intensity stuff was low mileage too. but MAF pace also improved a load. I'm watching my own improvements with interest, can't wait to see how it goes on next year and the year after that and so on.