If I have managed to convince you of the benefits of taking things slow and steady, then the next question will probably be quite simply ‘how?’
As with all my posts, I am not attempting to be an authority here, this is all just my opinion and I can only talk about my personal experience. That’s it.
So when I say starting to run slower sucks, I really mean it. I hated it. It felt wrong in every possible way. My stats were falling. I wasn’t enjoying my runs as much. I wasn’t getting the same endorphin highs.
The negatives just kept piling up. I started to feel listless. I started to lose interest. I broke out of my paced runs on several occasions, just to feel alive. I felt confused and irritated. I had heard so much about the benefits of running slower yet, my personal experience was just utterly depressing.
What was going wrong?
To answer this question I had to go back to understand how I was training up to that point and why that was ultimately a huge mistake.
Whenever we do something regularly we all go through a process of adaptation. As human beings we are remarkably adept at ‘getting used’ to things.
When I started running again in later life, I was doing so as a way to deal with various health issues that had started to become a problem. I am somewhat embarrassed to say that one of the things I was trying to change was a terrible smoking habit. It’s hard to believe I ever did this now, but the follies of youth stayed with me a little longer than they should have and I was starting to pay the price. Something had to change.
Consequently my early runs were a total disaster, my form was terrible, my breathing laboured, I barely made it 500 yards before my heart was pounding and I felt like I was going to die. It was awful. I was a mess.
Yet somehow, I felt better afterwards. I had a new found sense of hope. The rush of exercise was working its magic. Somehow I persevered and made it through a Couch to 5k program. I even started to feel good while running. This was amazing. What a transformation. I felt like I could do anything (but knew I couldn’t of course).
After the C25K, I continued running, but unbeknownst to me at the time I had fallen into some bad habits. My form was sort of okay, my routes were fine, my pacing and progression all good (for me). I even started covering some decent distances in reasonable times.
However, because of my previous bad habit, one thing was happening all the time that now, looking back, I realise was really bad. In short, I was constantly training in ZONE 6.
To understand why this is so bad, it’s necessary to understand what training zones are. These are slightly different for everyone, I will explain how to work out what your zones are in another post, but here’s a little breakdown of what my personal training zones are:
| ZONE | DEFINITION | HEART RATE |
|---|---|---|
| Zone 1 | Recovery | <122 |
| Zone 2 | Aerobic Endurance | 122-137 |
| Zone 3 | Aerobic Power | 138-144 |
| Zone 4 | Threshold | 145-155 |
| Zone 5 | Anaerobic Endurance | 156-161 |
| Zone 6 | Anaerobic Power | >161 |
Don’t worry too much if you don’t understand what each of the zone definitions are, and don’t worry about the actual numbers, all you need to get is that zone 1 is ‘easy’ and zone 6 is ‘working very hard’.
Back to the story, the reality was I had been training so hard in zone 6, all the time, that my body had adapted to reacting in the most efficient way it thought best. My internal body-messaging-system was saying to itself “Ohhh we are running again, quick get the heart rate up to max and prepare for extremely strenuous activity”. Yikes!!
No wonder my attempts to slow down and run in Zone 2 and 3 were so full of frustration and just made me feel terrible.
The moment I realised this I felt so silly. Instead of taking my time, going slowly and training my body to adapt to running in Zones 2 – 3. I had put so much effort in and trained my body to always work in Zone 6. Wow. That I could do this at all was amazing, but obviously I was leaving myself with no where to go, no reserves, and worst of all, establishing a severe limitation in terms of long distance running.
If you, like me, find distances over say 10 miles really difficult, then I would guess you may have made the same mistake and it might be worth checking out. The truth is, to run long distances you need to be working in zone 2 and 3. That’s it. No one can maintain zone 6 for hours on end. No one.
So what to do about this?
The sad, sad truth is it’s kinda back to square one. There is only one way to get your body to adapt to running in Zone 2 and 3 and that is to spend your time running in Zone 2 and 3.
Use a heart rate monitor and every time your heart rate creeps up into Zone 4, stop running and walk until your heart rate drops again (more on this in another post).
Keep doing this and slowly, but surely, the changes will happen and your body will eventually, after weeks and weeks of painful restraint, adapt. it’s awful, it’s soul crushing, but it works.
Until next time… keep running and I hope you have a great day!