#4 Mastering Zone Two Training: The Key to Endurance Success

In this episode, Emma, Tim, and Cal explore the intricacies of Zone 2 training—an often misunderstood yet crucial component for endurance athletes aiming for longevity and performance. Discover how to identify, train, and benefit from effective aerobic training, regardless of your level.

Key topics covered:

• Understanding what Zone 2 training truly entails scientifically and practically
• How heart rate, perceived effort, and technology can guide your training zones
• The importance of consistency and patience in building aerobic capacity
• Common pitfalls, especially when training in groups or following social media trends
• How to tailor Zone 2 training for different athletes, age groups, and experience levels
• The benefits of Zone 2 for mitochondrial density, fat oxidation, and motor pattern development
• Practical tips for beginners: starting slow, using walk-run strategies, and cross-training
• The impact of training intensity on race day performance and injury prevention
• The role of testing and metrics—heart rate, power, and lactate—in zone determination
• The mental challenge of staying disciplined in Zone 2 and managing social pressures

Come find us Cartel Coaching — Swim. Bike. Run. Together.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hey there, and thanks so much for joining us at Cartel Coaching. We know there's a lot of options when it comes to triathlon content and coaching content in general, so we're really glad you're here. Our mission is to make triathlon more accessible and to help break down the barriers to entry in a sport we care so much about. I'm Em, the Age Grouper, and I'm joined by Tim, our elite coach, and Cal, our ex-pro. Between the three of us, you're getting three really different perspectives on the sport, from learning and figuring it out in real time to elite coaching insights and years of race experience at that top end. We're here to share useful tips, practical advice, and our own experiences to help make triathon feel a little less overwhelming and a whole lot more doable. Now, let's get to today's episode. Welcome back to Cartel Coaching. So today we are talking all things zone two training, which is actually really great for me because I am back in the running arena. And Dam, as my coach, I did want to have a little chat with you about my running because um it's been feeling really good actually. Um I've been doing my skipping and my drills. And today I went out for a run and I was like, I'm gonna really make sure this is proper, aerobic, zone two, heaps chill. And I did that. And I went running. I was breathing through my nose. I felt really good the whole time. And then I stopped my run, and then my watch told me it was a tempo run. I was like, well, they right. So I'm very interested in your hot take on watches, on zone two, and on what the hell we should all be doing.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Well, the only thing there that we haven't established fully is where your zones truly sit. So it might be from the signs of signals that you're getting that you could be zone two, um, and that you're sitting in the right zone, and that maybe these zones in the background that we're still in our infancy of sorting out, uh, need to be a little bit more adjusted. So that could be the case, or it could be that you're just chasing the rabbit hole, like a miniature athlete's feels good, and then you just half step yourself. It's like a self-half wheel.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Uh I think it's the latter, and it'll we'll we'll need to work on that. But anyway. Um so let's dive right into it, gang. Zone two training, everybody talks about it. It's just like the buzzword that everybody is always using, and we're all meant to be doing this stuff, but I actually think, and I think from my own perspective, it's it's hard to understand, and it's hard to actually be able to, you know, identify what that actually what that looks like without the proper testing. So I don't know, gang. Where do you want to start?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Well, let's start. What is a zone two? I agree with you, and it's been a bit of a buzzword. Tim, would you like to try and define this?

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Oh, we'll go down a little two-minute geek hole here. So we'll go some scientific fact. So it's the intensity, you're primarily using aerobic metabolism. So aerobic is with oxygen for people out there, and with minimal lactate accumulation. So essentially the point where you can sustain work for a very long time while still developing your mitochondrial density, capillarization, and fat oxidization. And the key here is it's uh we're in a metabolic state. So we might get a little bit of heart rate drift through it. It's a metabolic state where we're staying aerobic the whole time. And people talk about, you know, when you're transferring to zone three, which is your grey zone, a lot of people talk about, that's where you get that slow lactate accumulation starting to happen because you're up in that two, so some people are up to four millimoles of lactate, and you're just starting to get that fatigue, your metabolic fatigue happening in the system because it needs a whole lot more carbs, carbohydrates to sustain that versus zone two. And zone two for a lot of people, uh it's where you will sit for a long period of time if you're doing an iron man. You're in zone two nearly all day long. And for me, actually, it's like my happy place. I go out to do venture races and stuff, I can just sit there in zone two. I like I I actually really enjoy the training. It's really fun. And um, some people hate it, they find it boring and it's it's long controlled intervals, they can't go fast. But it is really, really important training because it helps develop this aerobic capacity which we all need, which is going to help you in these long distance races, but also it's gonna help you in training recover from harder sessions and harder intervals with a bigger aerobic capacity.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Yeah, I think it's uh it sums it up nicely. I would say in layman's terms, it's probably the ability to behold to hold a conversation, and it's something obviously you can sustain all day. So, generally speaking, it'll be the pace when you go out for your long rides or runs with with a friend, you're able to talk without being out of breath. And um uh for me, I would feel like it's what a lot of your training throughout the week has done at that pace where it's sustainable, there's a ton of benefits. I think uh the problem a lot of people have is the discipline to stay in that zone and to stay in that pace and keep their gunpowder dry uh for those harder sessions are set all the time. Yeah, Tony, I reckon there's a lot of people that will be getting into zone three by the end of the session.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Or if you finish the session, they wouldn't be able to sit and go, hey, I could easily do 30% more of this session. Like you can go up for and for some sessions, even up to 50% more at this intensity and carry on. There'll be people like, duh, muscle fatigue's actually starting to kick in, and that's not really where we want to be. There'll be some of that for your beginner athletes, for for a well-conditioned athlete. Now we really shouldn't be starting to see too much of that in training sessions.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

The the challenge with uh zone two as well, I think, is when you're training in groups and all it really takes is one person to feel great or just to take it up the road. It could be a chop ride as well on the bike where everyone starts punching the hills, like riding the hills really fast, and then all of a sudden everyone is riding at that person's pace, uh, which may be well outside the pace that your coach has prescribed you as well. So all of a sudden, instead of being in your zone two, sort of aerobic pace, uh your whole session dynamic is changing uh because you're I guess you're sort of flirting with higher heart rates, um, and you're sort of getting into a danger zone. You're sort of training in the middle, I guess, so to speak. Remember some of those sessions, Cal?

SPEAKER_02 7:03

If you dial on back to the old altitude camps in Snow Farm, and it would it was sort of felt like a build before the explosions as people came over the Crown Range. You know, we'd get down to Cromwell pretty good, stop for a snack, and then going through the gorge, there would be this ramping effect of the group and we'd just for some reason I'd just suck along through the gorge. We get to the bottom of the Crown Range, everyone would be probably zone three. Me would be nearly zone four, zone five by that stage. Um because of my fitness level and your guys' superior fitness levels, and then we'd watch everybody explode as they tried to climb over the Crown Range to get back to the base road of Snow Farm. And that was like the typical group dynamic that you see in so many bunch rides.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

That's the thing as well, right? Um, I feel like the hot topic this last 12 months has been Pogachar's like zones or Matthew Vanderpool or Remco where they're going for these two, 300k rides, getting ready for these spring classics. They're at an absolute elite 1% level, and this their pace uh is far superior to your average Joe Blow. It's cool to look at and drool over on Strava, but um these guys are just cruising along as well. The other um thing to consider is they're riding with their teammates in some cases where it is easy for them to tick along at 40k an hour without thinking twice. Um and then I think what's happening is a lot of people see this data online in the social media age, and they're trying to apply that same theory to their training that Remco, Venopol just went under 160k at 40k an hour. That's what I need to do. The difference is that you're gonna be working at a much higher rate, probably a zone three or four, which uh your perceived effort is gonna be through the roof, and all of a sudden your session is gonna be completely different to what he's achieving. I I guess with social media too, right? Like everyone can see what everyone else is doing as well. Social media is my worst nightmare for this sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

It's just, you know, oh, such and such is doing this, or such and such posted this session. It'd be really cool to be able to do that. And people get these amazing ideas of where sessions to get to, but the reality for most of us is we're never gonna be able to trade that much. You know, I've got to go win Lotto tonight and hope that it's ten or fifteen million dollars, then I'm I might be there. And then the reality is even with all the training, I'm probably still not gonna get anywhere close. Um and it I think we really have to always just work within where we're at and just and just really think about where are you at, what's that next step that we need to make to go forward and then keep making those steps. And we always feel, and I think a lot of people will want for themselves to jump from zero to hero real quick and think that that's gonna happen. The reality with aerobic base building is that it's a slow grinding process, and you just have to commit to it and and find ways to enjoy it.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

So with age groupers, and especially in my case, going from Racing Pro where you've got plenty of time but you're broke, into being an age grouper where you've got plenty of money but you've got no time. Um what's the argument, in your opinion, uh, for age groupers who are time poor? Uh they don't have the time to do 10 hours of aerobic training a week. So they start doing everything pretty solid and in that sort of middle area. What what's your take on that?

SPEAKER_02 10:43

Oh, look, I think what we're missing is that they're just gonna need to take longer overall to develop their aerobic base. And then also just make sure those specific sessions are dialed in that are gonna make the difference. Um, because everyone feels, I think, that uh if they're training hard all the time, that feeling of training hard, they're gonna get benefits from that. But what they end up doing is they end up just working on this place in the middle, which isn't stretching what you might call a speed reserve or your anaerobic capacity at one end, and then it's not actually attenuating uh any sort of metabolic effect down the bottom end either. And so you're stuck in the middle, so you're not actually contributing to your fitness profile very well at all. So they should be really looking either specifically down zone one or long zone two reps, or trying to target zone four above. And there is some good theory around trying to develop VO2 max, which effectively aerobic capacity of using some real targeted high zone five reps as well and really attacking those hard. And it's something that I've started to build in recently actually, and enough in real time for at the moment. But if I can get on the bike and do 30 to 45 minutes and build in some high zone five work, I'm feeling like I'm getting a really, really good workout. But I'm working both ends of the spectrum really nicely because I've got some zone one warm-up, zone two warm-up, but then some real high muscular power efforts with implementing that top end.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Um, Em, for someone who's new to triathlon, what what is your take on sort of training speeds and training zones and that? Obviously, there's probably people listening being like, what the hell are these zones are talking about? Um what is your take on when you started training for triathlon with uh no background knowledge, would you just go out there and smash it? Would you just try to go out there and was there any pace variation between a run on a Monday and a run on a Friday?

SPEAKER_00 12:50

No, absolutely not. And I think that's why I ended up with a broken leg cow. Um, because I just um everything was about pace because I just felt like I needed to get faster. And I didn't understand that actually slow running needed to be slow. And uh and yeah, so everything was just very the same. It was similar for the pool as well. Um and like all of them, really to be honest. It was everything was just as fast as I could do it. Um, but yeah, and but I think I'm at a an interesting phase now where you know I've done a fair bit of triathlon and I understand the principles of it, so I don't object to the principles of it, but there just seems to be a difference in you know the the data that I receive and then how I'm feeling. I'd say I'm I'm kind of a vibes-based uh trainer now, like I I do a lot of RPE and and how I'm feeling. And um, and as we're talking about just earlier, you know, I was today, even in my run, I was feeling, you know, breathing through my nose, just sort of drifting off, thinking about stuff, but then came back and and it was my tempo session. So it's um it can just get really confusing, I think, um, with all the information that you have access to with the watches and all that stuff, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:05

There's a lot to be said for simplifying things, right? Like paralysis from analysis. And I think the more data we seem to have added in, even at a high performance level, it just seems to get really muddled and often people lose clarity of what they're really trying to focus on. And it mentally affects people all the time because the reality is you just need to turn up and do the best you can every day. And people turn up and they don't see the numbers they're expecting or wanting. People could be exiting sessions or going really bad that day instead of just dealing with what's in front of them.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

So is it better to train like Jane and race like Tarzan or train like Tarzan and race like Jane? Because obviously you're getting criticized every day from Garmin about being inactive, your VO2 not looking sharp. Um, I feel that I feel that there's a lot of social pressures as well with everyone being able to compare their paces these days. And I went back and I looked at some of my training from 2018 uh when Bevin when Bevan was coaching me. It was actually it was refreshing because um it was good to see the paces. I was doing long runs of like 545k pace, uh, but then had the ability to do the hard stuff really hard. So you you create this higher ceiling. Uh, there's a big discrepancy. I always liken it to like a manual stick shift car. You need these different paces, otherwise, you just get really good getting stuck at one pace. There's no discrepancy. Um, I've always subscribed to sort of polarized training where 80% of the week we're just going at conversation pace and 20% of the week we're going full gas. Uh, we're doing our really hard stuff hard. Like you say, Tim, you're jumping on the trainer, you're doing your VO2 stuff, you're lifting that top end. It's something that I was watching about on Lionel Sanders videos recently where he's like, we want to really work on that top end stuff to increase the ceiling. If we want to race at 300 watts for a half iron man, we need to be doing our intervals at 350 or 400 watts, depending on the duration. You can't expect the body to to race at 300 watts if um you're not showing the body what it's capable of or what it's what what we need to do on race day. We need to be going above and beyond that in training. Uh and if you're doing all your stuff in that gray area, I feel like it makes those harder sessions really hard because a lot of the time we're time poor, we've got family, we've got work, we're running around like headless chickens. And um it's like I think it requires more discipline to uh keep the gunpowder dry. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

Uh one of the things when working with Bevan, uh it was interesting, is the embarrassing slow run is what he called it. That's what I just saw. Yeah, classic.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

It was um generally by yourself. It could have been a double run day where it was a second run in the evening. And then, you know, I I laughed about that because that was one of the sessions I saw. And um, but I I personally could still go out and run a 250 marathon off that because what you've got this res uh residual fatigue during the week, right? So there's gonna be some sessions in the pool, on the bike, and in the run where you might not be able, you might not be at your best, you might not be doing your best times or your best numbers, but you're carrying a lot of fatigue. And I always think race week is special and race day is special because race week you taper and you freshen up. Um, race day is exciting. Uh you've got aid stations, you've got family, it's a celebration of your training. You've got your race shoes on, you've got your race wheels on. Uh, so I feel like it's you it's a celebration of everything, but it's also you've got you've shed yourself a fatigue if you've tapered correctly. And um you can all of a sudden you can hold those 300 watts that you're hoping to hold. And um, and yeah, I think that's only because you've got to have confidence to get through those highs and lows and training because there's certain days you will feel terrible. You can no one is feeling great every single day.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Yeah, I think that's perception that's put across in social media often, right? Is that people only post the good stuff when they're feeling good and things are going great and no one's gonna post the rubbish days and they feel no one wants to hear about it. And so you get this feeling that people are just on track all the time. And the reality is they're probably off track more than they're on track. Um unless they're real do it, they're weak styled in, but still within that, there's there's just so many stresses that kick on in your life that can impact it, not just the training. Um you know, your son has a boo-boo and you're in an E for six hours, one E for ten stitches in their leg, well, that's your sleep gone for the night. You know, and dealing with that, and that's just gonna affect your next two days of training until you've called that back. And um, that's where I think the value of being able to sit back into like a zone two effort and aerobic efforts is really important because they're always valuable and you should always pretty much be able to handle them. And so you can always inject them in uh into your training when other things are going wrong.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

From a physiological point of view, um what are some of the things that we're building during zone two training? Like you I feel like you you're spending a lot of the week in zone two, and um I find it almost most pleasant because a lot of the time uh you can find a a buddy to train with and you're like, hey, we're going out for our ride, we ride at 28, 29k an hour, we can have a conversation, we can catch up. Um same with running, we're going for a trail run, we're just keeping it conversation pace. Uh we're it's aerobic, so it's not we're not under too much stress, we're able to keep conversation, we're not running out of breath. Um, but what are some of the things that are happening to our bodies when we're training at that pace?

SPEAKER_02 20:01

Well, see, from a it's an aerobic adaptation. So the aerobic system is supposed to be on mitochondrial density, so they're effectively getting denser and and not in the dumb way. You know, they're adapting very positive for your system. Um, this is a increasing capillarisation through your muscular structure. And there's also a really important thing, especially for IMA athletes, and you're learning to burn fats and turn fats into ATP. So you're utilising different energy pathways through the system. Then you've also got to look down through a biomechanical system as well, or a a muscular system. You know, so you're getting time on your feet. You know, you can rehearse really good motor patterns for running, swimming and riding. Um you're also getting you're still working on little concepts like um your elastic rebound so you're running. Um you can work on your arm drive, you know, you can pick up technique cues. There's a lot of stuff you can achieve that you won't achieve if you're in zone three. Um when you're trying to ride yourself out of your saddle.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

As someone new to endurance sports, um do you think it's beneficial to do like quite a long phase in sort of that zone two before really adding in any of the the secret sauce? The only reason I ask is uh before I became a triathlete, I was just on a weight loss journey. And I used steady state cardio as one of the main levers to um drive my weight loss because it was easy to maintain while I was in a calorie deficit, right? And I think without me doing that, and that that was like a you know, just your 10,000 steps, and I did an hour of elliptical every day for 18 months, every day without fail. Um, we I really feel like that gave me a like almost like a little edge when I started coming into uh endurance training because.'Cause I just had built something that I didn't even know I was really building. Um, and and so then when I just started to do the running and the cycling, particularly the cycling, it just made it a lot easier, I think.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

Yeah, I've I think it's super valuable. And people don't commit enough time to it. It's often either trying to race into a race, you know, they they've time crunch, they're coming late to the piece or they feel like they need to be doing this intensity because they've got less hours to get ahead. Now, even at at my end, you know, taking time, I've dipped in and out of events and racing, but I came back to coast to coast. And I'd say I probably spent six months in zone one to two doing around eight to ten hours a week. And that was it. I didn't do uh any really key sessions, a couple hard rides, some hill reps and stuff, um, some strides running and some intervals like light intervals coyaking, like speed reps, we're doing 30-second intervals. But I got to my first event off the back of that. So I went to a first event which is a challenge one of a multi purely off aerobic training, had a great day out. It was fantastic. And be honest, between then and Coast, which was another four months, I didn't change a huge amount. I kept it really aerobic, and it was just one session a week in each discipline that I actually started to do some higher end threshold work. Um, awesome, pretty focused tempo, sweet spot work as well. So I think you can do a lot off it. And it's such a key driver for performance that it's a missed opportunity for most people. And the thing is, it's actually from a social point of view, as Cal pointed out before, it's awesome. Because you can just go out on the yarn all day um and just engage.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

All right, so I've got a question. So how many zones are there and how do we figure them out? Five.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Effectively. And you know, people may also call these easy, steady, moderately hard, hard, very hard. It's a real easy descriptor. Or people can use an RPE around that where you're going from one through to ten, ten being very hard, one being easy, you know, and there's a spectrum in between, obviously, with your RPE. There'll be a I mean, people sit there and argue, there's six zones, oh there's seven zones, because people will take zone five and they'll break it down to five A, B, C. Simple thing, five, and actually if you really want to get simple, you could say there's like uh three, and just say there's below lactate threshold one, above lactate threshold two, and then your max efforts. Um and that that's a real simple approach that some people actually have used. Now the premise of finding that out is yeah, you can go do some lactate testing, you can go to some gas analysis in a lab. But the reality for most of us is we're not gonna be running around like Christian Blumenthal with someone on the cycle next to us testing our lactate every 400 meters. Um, that's just not gonna happen. So having the lactate out doesn't help so much, but having a guide from heart rate does, or a guide from your pace, your power. So something that most of us can do is we can use a power meter or your watch to go out and do some critical power testing and use a calculator like they have on High North to help define your zones from a pace a power perspective. You know, we could do a 30-minute run test to help define our zones from a run perspective. Um and training peaks has real simple systems where you can input your threshold heart rate you get from those tests and then just delineate your five zones and it's gonna give you a real accurate guide.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

And and there's something to be said as well for keeping it simple with the amount of technology, data, and you know, information out there uh on different media channels. I think if you can identify and figure out uh, you know, one to five, one's very easy, five's very hard. When you're at five, a zone five, um you know, you can't sustain that for long. This is very top-end, this is as hard as you can go. It's it's like strides sprinting on the bike, it's full-on sprints, um, top-end stuff, uh, short, generally short intervals with uh sometimes long uh recovery breaks. That's why if we go back to zone two, it's sustainable and it's something that you can sustain for a long time. Um and I always like having that discrepancy between the different zones as well. You know, zone one and two, you can use interchangeably. But once you start getting up into zone three, four, five, I feel like they're quite defined. And if you can figure out whether that's power numbers, you know, you carry out an FTP test, um, you figure out, you know, training peaks, or Zwift will give you your numbers based on a test or a critical power test. And same with running as well, there's ways that you can test yourself as well and just figure out what you need to be doing for zone two. Your zone two could be different to someone else who's more advanced, they could be older or younger. Your zone two pace as well could differentiate from this week to next week just based on how much fatigue you're carrying as well. You know, you could be running 30 seconds a kilometer faster. Um, you could be bike biking a few, you know, kilometers an hour faster or slower. So it's it's very hard to be like, hey, last weekend I did my long ride at 30k an hour average. This weekend is 20k an hour average. Um, still in the same zone. So that's why perception is quite helpful as well as Em said she just likes to buy belong. Um so long as you keep in touch with that as well, then uh yeah, I think uh there's something to be said for that.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

I think it's challenging for new runners though, and I I feel like that's where it really tripped me up in the very beginning. You know, you you're learning how to run, and run is running's tough, right? And if you haven't been someone who's been a runner for a really long time, to go out and say, Okay, this is my easy run, and to do that run in an easy heart rate, sometimes that just feels impossible. Like there is no easy zone for you because you're just not you're not kind of there as a runner yet. Do you have those people like that, Tim? What what do you do to sort of combat that as a as a new new runner?

SPEAKER_02 28:30

I think you'd also find that a new swimmers is exactly the same and see them floundering at the 15 meter mark and rolling over their back because they're trying to get oxygen and because they're not they're not efficient with it and they can't they can't breathe properly and then heart rates are through the roof and they're struggling. And the biggest thing about running is actually it's got a higher mechanical cost than walking. Um so your aerobic system can only really support a really slow run before zip tipping over and into zone two, three. Um, so that's why you'll see a lot of people having to use like a walk-run strategy when they're starting off to actually keep heart rates down as their mechanical system sort of captures up and becomes more efficient and then able to deliver, you know, the pace that's required or a faster pace for the heart rate that's required. That's that's typically what we're experiencing. That's that's why we want to look at other things when we're learning to run about how we can develop the muscular system to try and support you running. So, you know, we've got you doing the skipping M, for example. It's a really good thing to get that light plyometric effect. No, we're in the gym again now, we're doing a lot more strength work and jumps and trying to create uh a bit of a strong reactive posterior chain as well. And developing that portfolio is then gonna help actually accelerate your running forward because we're changing the mechanical ability of you.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Yeah. There's uh if you don't have a skipping rope, I mean you can go hiking as well. You can uh go walking on the beach or running up sand dunes, trying to make it fun for yourself. There's a bunch of different ways you can cross-train to get your body conditioned. And then there's no shame as well in walk-running, you know. Uh if you don't know where to start with that, you can either talk to us or you can Google a walk-run strategy. You could be out on the road for an hour and a half during a walk-run and feel good about that and come home satisfied. Where, you know, you could be walking nine minutes, run a minute, and then build that up to eight and two, seven and three, you know, six and four until all of a sudden, you know, you progress it to a point where uh you've been on your feet for like a couple of months now, and then you're slowly starting to run again and a return to run program from injury, or even if you're just getting off the couch and getting active, there's there's a level for everyone to start there.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Yeah, I love it. And Cal, what have you seen, I guess, coming back as an age grouper in terms of, you know, I bet you were doing like mass zone two training as a pro. Like, how have you found your training coming back into the sport and being busy?

SPEAKER_01 31:08

I honestly, I well, being surrounded with age groups, I feel like every a lot of people train way too fast. And I feel like they're stuck in the middle because they're time poor, or their friend who does well in their age group, trains at this pace, so they should do it as well. And from my experience, I know Mel Helshalt, Lionel Sanders, Jan Fredino have uh been the only athletes I know personally who can train at a really high or fast pace and sustain it, but they are very unique. I feel like women can back up um a lot better than men, generally speaking. I don't know why that is, but I feel like uh I used to train with Mel Hellschelt all the time, who won a bunch of world titles, and she could hammer herself on Saturday and back up on Sunday and be good as gold. Whereas I I've I just found I needed like a bit of time in the fetal position to recover from what we had just done on Saturday. So we'll do a long run Sunday and I'd be buckled. But to answer your question, I would say uh I still think there's way too many people who are training way too close to their race pace. Um, and then they struggle on race day to actually go much faster at all. And um and I think it's just like I said before, because I think they're just copying other people, that's what they've seen on Strava. Um, I'll give you an example. Training for 70.3 cans, I'm hoping to run 355 or 4 minute K pace, which is around a 120. Uh, my three runs this week uh have all been at 545 uh kilometer pace. So there's like a minute 45, a minute 50 slower than what I hope to race at. With that being said, I did one session this week where I did four by one K's at 327, 327, 329, and 330. So with I'm doing everything super easy, and then that key session super hard. And then on race day, we're gonna be in the middle, um, you know, more towards the faster stuff. But I feel that one, going slower, it keeps your gunpowder dry, it lowers the risk of injury as well, and it's more enjoyable. So the zone two is a really sweet spot to be. And I think it's there's something to be said for that, uh, especially as well as you get older and there's you know, your achy knees, achy, you know, calve strains, that kind of stuff as well. So um my advice to a lot of age groupers is to slow down to speed up.

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Well, that's a wrap. But if you want to keep the conversation going, come find us on Instagram at cartel.coaching. And for coaching camps and community, you can check out our webpage. I've linked it in the show notes. See you next time.