Using the Pace Zone Index to Train Harder

In his latest article, "Using the Pace Zone Index to Train Harder," Matt Fitzgerald discusses how the recent emphasis on heart rate has encouraged athletes to focus their training on physiology rather than performance. He suggests that, instead of training physiology, athletes should use training devices to shift their focus from heart rate to pace.

The primary importance of hard work in the training process has been obscured by the physiology-based training approach that has dominated endurance sports since the advent of heart rate monitors 20 years ago. The problem with heart rate monitors is that they encourage athletes to train physiology instead of training performance. The problem with training physiology instead of performance is that it discourages athletes from pushing themselves as hard as they would push if they kept their focus on performance. When your main concern in workouts is to stay within a target heart rate zone, you place a somewhat artificial ceiling on your performance. But when you focus instead on performance variables such as speed, distance and power output, you naturally push to beat the standards set in previous workoutsthat is, you work harder, and as a result you get a bigger fitness stimulus from the session.

When your main concern in workouts is to stay within a target heart rate zone, you place a somewhat artificial ceiling on your performance.

Perhaps the greatest potential benefit of training with the new generation of high-tech training gadgetspower meters and speed and distance devicesis strikingly old-fashioned: it simply helps you work harder. In running, the recent advent of speed and distance devices has helped to turn runners focus back from heart rate to pace. If done properly, training by pace pushes you to run harder in your key workouts and thus get more benefit from these workouts. Pace and time over distance are meaningful to runners. For this reason, you will almost always perform better in your harder workouts if, instead of just running by heart rate, you run in pursuit of a goal time or pace that forces you to run a bit faster than you would run by feeljust as you will almost always run the homestretch of a race faster if youre battling another runner for position than if youre all alone.

The performance-enhancing effect of performance feedback has been demonstrated scientifically. In a British study, 40 healthy male subjects performed a challenging shuttle run test both with and without performance feedbackspecifically, pace and time informationprovided by observers. The researchers found that the subjects performed significantly better in the test with performance feedback. Clearly, they were motivated by the numbers.

The Pace Zone Index is a simple tool that I developed with Training Peaks to enable runners with speed and distance devices to select appropriate target pace levels for each workout and execute their pace-based runs correctly. This tool is based on the VDOT pace-based training system developed by Jack Daniels. There are other paced-based training systems, but we recommend that you use the Pace Zone Index because of its compatibility with speed and distance devices. To learn more about PZI, click here.

What Im talking about is aiming to perform just a little better in each workout of a given type than you did in the last workout of the same type. This sort of performance mindset encourages you to work slightly harder than you might do otherwise but still involves a measure of restraint.

At first blush, my PZI pace zones might seem functionally equivalent to the heart rate zones in other systems. But they are intended to be used quite differently. In heart-rate based training, zones are used to keep you from running too fast or too slow. In PZI-based training, pace zones are used to help you push harder and run faster. Im not talking about treating workouts as races, where the goal is to hold nothing back and finish with nothing left. Seldom should you push yourself truly as hard as you can in workouts. Such efforts would be counterproductive, because they would take a long time to recover from and would therefore sabotage your performance in your next few runs. What Im talking about is aiming to perform just a little better in each workout of a given type than you did in the last workout of the same type. This sort of performance mindset encourages you to work slightly harder than you might do otherwise but still involves a measure of restraint.

Lets look at an example of how to do this. The threshold pace zone for a PZI score of 30 (that is, for a 43:00 10K runner) is 7:09-6:55 per mile. When running a threshold workout, precisely how fast should a 30 PZI runner go? Initially, you will simply have to go by feel. If your first threshold workout calls for three miles of running in Zone 6 (threshold) between a warm-up and a cool-down, just aim to run faster than 7:10 per mile during that three-mile segment and allow your subjective rating of perceived exertion to determine how much faster. After completing the workout, review it to find your average pace for the threshold portion of the workout. That precise pacesuppose its 7:07 per milebecomes your stake in the ground. In your second threshold run, aim to run 7:07 per mile or slightly faster, and in the third one, aim to slightly beat your average pace in the second, and so forth, even as you gradually increase the distance of these runs.

The goal is never to run as fast as you can. But by running the first key workout of each type at the appropriate pace for your PZI level and then pushing to raise the bar a bit in each subsequent workout of that type, you will generally train a little harder and gain fitness slightly faster without overtaxing yourself and failing to get the desired training effect from these workouts. Use the same approach with every pace zone except the low aerobic zone, which is used exclusively for active recovery and therefore should be controlled primarily by perceived exertion (it should always feel very comfortable, no matter how slow you have to go to keep it comfortable).

About Matt Fitzgerald
Matt Fitzgerald is a journalist, author, coach and runner specializing in the topics of health, fitness, nutrition, and endurance sports training (read more about Matt on his blog). Matt uses TrainingPeaks to train, coach and deliver pre-built training plans for runners including training plans built specifically to be used with a Garmin Forerunner.

Comments

[Rob]

Hello:

Is there a similar PZI chart in km's? Your race examples (i.e. 3k, 5k and 10k) are metric, yet the Target Pace Training Zones use miles.