Understanding Training Zones: Zone 4, Zone 5, & Zone 6

Carrie Tollefson: This is episode 2 of a two-part series where our coaches talk to us about all six training zones, which is actually really cool. And what is actually happening in our bodies when they are in zones 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. There's lots of them. Last week we learned a lot about zones 1, 2, and 3. And today we're going to circle back to hear about zones 3, 4, and 5. We're joined by RunDot coach Brady Hoover. Brady's been on the show a lot. He is an ACSM certified personal trainer as well as a level two run DNA certified running gate analyst. He is also an eight time Boston marathon runner with a 2:48:40 marathon PR. Yay. Also with us is coach Ben Somerville. Ben works with runners and triathletes through precision coaching based in the UK. He is a two-time triathlon short course national champion and well on his way to running a super fast half marathon. I'm Carrie Tollefson, Olympian broadcaster and your guide to the world to run dot. We treat the show like any good workout. We'll start with a warm-up question, settle into our main set conversation, and then wind things down by having our coaches answer an audience question on the cool down. Lots of good stuff today, so let's get after it. All right, guys. Thanks for coming on the show. We're gonna start with our warm-up question. which is a good one today. RunDot training sessions often include run drills to help us warm up before we get cranking. I wanna know what run drill is your least favorite to do. So not your favorite, but the one you don't like to do. Ben, do you wanna start?

Ben Sommerville: Yeah, I'll start. And I think the wrong answer to say, first of all, is any drills are my least favorite. But I, course, do my drills and I do enjoy most of them. But the ones I don't enjoy, actively dislike and avoid them are the A skips and the B skips. The timing of those, I just can't get right. And I kind of just look like I'm hopping around like Tigger, who's had far too many caffeine gels in the morning. So not my favorite.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. Mmm. Hilarious. Well, you have you seen how some of the East African athletes it's now trickled over But they do it as like a dance. It's like a choreography. It's so cool So Ben you might need to go over well get on over there and have them teach you how to do it Yes, exactly. All right, Brady, how about you?

Ben Sommerville: I've tried that once with a group. I'm off. So I'm going to Kenya. See you later, everybody.

Brady Hoover: It's funny that you mentioned the A skips and B skips because I've seen those videos and I think I look like them because I have the coordination down. I probably look nothing like them. But I do like that drill. For me, I mean, I like running drills. I just I don't know why I do. They just warm me up, especially this time of year when I'm doing them in my garage before I head out in the snowy cold conditions. But I would have to say calf busters. Calf busters. don't know why there's other things like bounds and strides that I like that work the But calf busters is one that, well, I don't like to bust out.

Carrie Tollefson: I love it. I love it. I think that for me, I like to do high knees, but you know your heart rate is going to spike and you know that you're going to kind of get out of breath and it hurts. It's like kind of going up stairs. When you go upstairs, you always get out of breath. Like no matter how fit you are, everybody loses their breath on stairs, especially if you do them fast. And that's how high knees are. You know they're good for you. They get you ready to go, but I definitely like, this is going to be hard. So, okay, good. Well, audience, we want to hear from you. We'll ask the question on all of our RunDot social media accounts. We're curious to hear what's your least favorite drill to do before training. Find us on socials and let us know. All right, here we go. Main set. Ben and Brady, we're pumped to have you on the show this week to talk about fast running zones. Now, last week on the show, we heard about zones one, two, and three. And so before we speed things up for four, five, and six, I want you to tell us a little bit about what you like in those zones one, two, and three. Brady, do you want to start this time?

Brady Hoover: Sure, I'd love to. Yeah, great, great episode. yeah, zone one, I say that's like super light recovery. sometimes it's walking, especially when we get further along and we talk about zone five and what's going on there. If I do a zone five interval, I'm recovering in zone one, which means I am walking for at least a minute, before tackling it. zone two should feel easy, conversational pace. something that you could do if trained for it pretty much all day. zone three, I say that's It's more that, I say it's comfortably uncomfortable. We can hold it for a very long time, like a marathon, that's usually where we're running. It's comfortably uncomfortable until it's not, which comes in later in the marathon. And I always say, the pace hasn't changed. Why does this feel so much harder, you know, after two hours than it did in the first 30 minutes? Like, what's going on? We haven't changed our pace.

Carrie Tollefson: Right. Yeah, for sure. I kind of love zone three, that short answer pace. You still can go out there and have fun. You know you're working hard, but I think that's my favorite zone. I think I'm in that zone way too much. Way too much. Okay, how about you Ben? What do you like about one, two, and three?

Ben Sommerville: the one thing that I personally like, I'm a bit of a zone three fan as well. That kind of like zone three bottom of zone four. And we'll talk about that in a minute. That kind of like half marathon sweet spot where it is like uncomfortably, know, comfortably uncomfortable for a significant majority of the time. But the thing I always say to my athletes first and foremost about any of the one, two or three, the zones there, it's just to respect them. They're there for a reason. And just don't be embarrassed if your zone one or zone two has to be a walk, whether that's for some portion of an entire Zone 2 run, or whether it's in Zone 2 recovery intervals when you're doing a slightly faster interval run. Just don't be embarrassed, don't be ashamed to just walk those intervals. If Zone 2 is meant to be easy, respect that. It's nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about. It's there for a reason. And a Zone 2 run can be really fun, particularly if you're out and about exploring. I quite like a Zone 2 run to explore.

Carrie Tollefson: for sure. Yeah. Yeah, I love those as well. I just have a hard time, especially when I'm by myself just getting out there and doing a short run. I sometimes forget that I have to have recovery days in between as well, even though I'm not doing anything really hard right now. Before we get into talking more specifics about those zones, I kind of just want to do some, you know, general chat a little bit about. what it is like for you as coaches to help your athletes find these different zones. Like how do you guys do that? I know run dot has its own way, but too when you guys are coaching your athletes one-on-one you use run dot, but also you have your own technique. So tell me a little bit about how you help your athletes nail their faster paces. Brady do you want to go? It's hard to say Brady and Ben. It's like how would I how would I combine these two names? Brady, Ben. Yeah, yeah Brady you go.

Brady Hoover: We get the... We got B1 and B2 or Ding 1 and Ding 2. Yeah, I'll take a stab at it. yeah, one of the most important things is our benchmarking and being consistent with that because that's where Rundahl is going to set up all those training zones is by benchmark. And then I can translate that to rate of perceived effort, right? We have pace. have, you know, some of us have run power. We have heart rate. But at the end of the day, rate of perceived effort as well is super important when, you know, say technology fails us. I know we're talking about zones four, five and six. Do you want me to start there?

Carrie Tollefson: Well, no, I was just kind of wondering how you guys do that. Like even Ben, you can maybe answer this for me. Like does each athlete have their own zone or their own numbers? Like how do you guys figure that out? Because I know for me, I'm a lot different than, you know, even my daughter who has my genetics. So like, how do you guys figure this all out?

Ben Sommerville: Well, first and foremost, I always rely on that initial benchmarking as Brady's just said, you know, that is just a really objective numerical way to very clearly understand exactly what your capacity is and how that kind of proportionally distributes across those different training efforts. And then for me, I very much enjoy particularly for the slower zones to really help athletes tune into that RPE and to listen to things like their breathing rate, like their heart rate, quite literally listening and feeling it rather than looking at a watch because, you know, some days your rate of perceived exertion can be quite different to what your output actually is. So having athletes become attuned and aware of these things, it's just a really great way to mix up the training, give it a new focus, particularly if people are plateauing or if they're beginners, to kind of take the pressure and the stress away of going, the numbers don't look quite right. I just go, hang on, take a step back. Are you breathing under control? Can you have a conversation? You're in zone two. Is your breathing starting to become quite labored, quite fast? quite chest heavy, can you no longer hold a conversation? You may be moving to zone three, zone four, and over time, they kind of build like a mind, muscle, heart and lung sort of memory connection where myself and my athletes go right. Without looking at my watch, I know exactly what I'm doing and I can sort of pace myself accordingly. I have most of my athletes, including myself, whether we've got the watch on or not, for particularly the longer, slower runs, to put the screen onto just the clock face. or to just hide the watch and don't look at it and then wait till the end of the run and go, right, was that actually what we were looking for? And 50, 60 % of the time, we've probably not done it, but that kind of 40, 50 % of the time where we actually do do it correctly is really rewarding and serves us better on race day where I've had examples of, or race day scenarios where my watch has failed and I've had to run to feel. And so very general principles can apply to everybody effectively across the zones, but I do find it easier. on those sort of slower zones to really tune in because people are less distracted by, my goodness, I'm running really fast. I can't think about anything other than running fast. And so it's easier to practice when you're running easy and then the principles apply as you get faster.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. It's so funny that you say that because my very first marathon was four months after I had my second baby. And so it was kind of crucial for me to have my watch and to make sure I didn't go out at like this pace that I was used to as a professional athlete. Like, you know, my legs still knew how to do that, but my lungs and my body at that moment were nothing near that kind of fitness. And I got to the start line of the Twin Cities Marathon and my watch was dead. I thought I had plugged it in but I must have just missed it, you know, and it died there. Like I got my warm-up in, I had it all ready and then it was dead. I mean it is so true that you definitely like we love all this technology but you really have to listen to your body when you're training and you have to get like used to these zones even when you don't have the markers. There's something that RunDot has called the training stress profile. Brady, can you tell us a little bit about that and before we even get into the zones but like what does that do for us as athletes and also what kind of information does that give you guys as coaches?

Brady Hoover: Yeah, so the training stress profile, jeez, could spend a whole episode on this, but I love it. Yeah, we could geek out on this and go deep, but I'll keep it high level. I'll keep it high level for today. So training stress profiles, the athlete's ability to handle different types of stress, whether it's aerobic stress, anaerobic stress, threshold stress, neuromuscular, right? We have all these different of

Carrie Tollefson: Maybe we should. All those big words

Brady Hoover: And these are like different zones, right? Aerobic stress zone two, anaerobic stress threshold stress, sorry, zone four, neuromuscular stress zone six. missing a few off the top of my head. And then we have the athlete's ability to handle training stress per session, how much training stress per week, and how much training stress per month. So an athlete sets up an account on RunDot based on their age and gender and if they connect a device, we're able to look back at some of the past training if they have history and develop a training stress profile. If they don't have past history, we will develop one by age and gender. And then as the athlete starts executing workouts, depending on how well they executed or didn't. that is going to go up or down over time. And Runda is going to, through its AI, is going to learn your ability to handle stress. So you can see those numbers in your training stress profile going up. I mean, it takes a long time for it to really go up. It takes a lot of consistency for that to go up. But the higher your training stress per session, per week, per month is, the tougher the workouts you're going to see versus an athlete that maybe is in their first year, their training stress. Let's just use a one through 10 scale. You know, you have a top age group where they're training stress across the board is like nines and tens, right? They're gonna get some tough workouts in there where somebody just starting out They might be four or five right depending on age and gender, right? And that's gonna that's gonna help with programming what is right for this athlete right out of the gate

Carrie Tollefson: You know, I think it's neat and AI to me is still kind of like, oh, it's kind of a little voodoo-ish, you know? Like, what is going on? But I think it's important you kind of touch on it, Brady, where the system gets to know you. And so if you are new to run dot. you do sort of have to grow with it a little bit, right? If you don't have those markers, it will give us, it's, there's kind of like your heart rate, or if you're trying to hit your VO2 max back in the day, they had that formula that everyone used until we, you know, got more into going and actually getting our VO2 max tested. But that's sort of how this is too. If you don't have those markers already, RunDot will figure that out as you grow with them, right? Or grow with it, however you put it.

Brady Hoover: Correct, yeah. Ben, I miss anything there?

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, so, so, yeah, bed?

Ben Sommerville: I don't think you've missed anything there, but just one thing I like to really hone down my athletes if they do want to really dig into the training stress profile is it's effectively, I like to refer to it as it's the GPS. So regardless of our end destination, if we decide to kind of just go off course or go back on course throughout the sort of our training time, that training stress profile is going to kind of keep course correcting us. So we make, still making sure we get from A to B in the most effective. time effective, energy effective possible to give us the best results, the best outcomes. And so it is effectively the foundation of a lot of how run dot and the fit logic engine works to kind of course correct people, whether they're over training, under training or doing the right training just right when they need to. And so that's the most basic conversation I have with my athletes because it can get quite overwhelming looking at it. So if there are any run dot athletes who are new to looking at the training stress profile, if you are new, give it some time. give it some consistency, give it some good understanding about who you are. It's like having a coach in your back pocket effectively. It's going to respond. It's going to course correct. It's that ultimate GPS to make sure you get to race day. Not overtrained, not under trained, just correctly trained.

Carrie Tollefson: Okay, let's talk about zone four. All right, we're going to talk. We're going to start with you, Brady. What the heck's going on with zone four before we get to five and six?

Brady Hoover: Yeah, so zone four, we call this threshold because it's the point in time or the pace or the effort at what point that your body is producing lactic acid as quickly as the body can clear it. The longer we stay in that, the longer we stay in zone four. The more it starts to hurt, right? Think about you're in zone four for 10 minutes. It's not, it's not, it's hard, but it's not so bad, right? Cause we're able to clear it. Um, get up past like 30 minutes, um, and start approaching 40 minutes. gets a lot tougher. Like, you know, the RPA may start at like a seven out of 10. You get 40 minutes in. It's like, that's a nine out of 10. If you can hold that for theoretically an hour, we say that's our one hour pace. It's like a 10 out of 10 by the time we finished. But what starts happening is we're, we're just not able to clear lactic acid. That's what. we start to fatigue, feel the muscle burn, why that RP starts to go up. So that's, you know, in general what's happening at that zone.

Carrie Tollefson: But zone four, like. I think of threshold as, you know, we were talking about zone three at the top of it, you're getting kind of like short answer where you're breathing pretty heavy, but you can't just like tell your whole life story in that zone. Like you might be like, you know, tell a sentence and then got to take a breath and whatever. But zone four, the bottom of zone four to the top of zone four can kind of, I mean, you're really not able to talk too much. Like you're still able to talk, but like, what, what is it? What should you feel? like in zone 4? Should you feel like you can go for 10 miles at that pace?

Brady Hoover: Great question. You should feel like you can go for roughly, depending on fitness and training, at least 40 minutes at that pace. A more well-trained, I shouldn't say well-trained, more of a half marathon or marathoner, if that's their sweet spot. They should be close to an hour. If it's 5K, 10K, you know, about 40 minutes. When you start out at that, yeah, it's exactly what you said. It's, can, I can speak in maybe a short sentence and then a response. And it's like, okay, I got to respond to this, this first question that I'm talking to here, but I need a couple of deep breaths and then I can respond. So it's definitely a delayed response when you're trying to talk. That's about the effort there. I say it starts out at our RPE if we're on a 1 to 10 scale. It's about a 7 out of 10 as you start.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, yeah. I feel like that's a zone too where it's kind of like a cranky zone. You're like, it's our toothache, you know? You're like, I can be here, but you know, coach, I don't want to like really have to tell you how I'm feeling. Like by the end of the workout, whether it's a 20 minute threshold, 40, you're kind of like annoyed. You know, but still having fun like it's weird, right? Well, all of us runners are kind of like that. We're like, why do we do this to ourselves at times? And that sort of this zone is why do we do that? By the end of it? We're like ready to be done. Ben, tell us a little bit about when you find zone four in your training cycle. Like when do we see the most of zone four?

Ben Sommerville: Yes, so certainly from a run-up point of view, you'll see more Zone 4 training during your development phase. So when you are much further out from a race, you would let arguably more than 12, 16 weeks before a big A race. And the reason we do this is because you get great sort of bang for your buck effectively. It's a highly productive training zone. It does require significant recovery because it can be quite fatiguing. It takes a lot of mental and physical kind of focus and intention to complete it well. You know, you can't just run with poor form if you want to be able to maintain zone four for any amount of time. And so in that development phase, you are going to see progressively harder and harder running sessions, interval sessions, where the zone four utilization will be different. So it may be a fewer longer zone four intervals. It may be a progression where it's so important to those that get progressively longer or progressively shorter progression or kind of a regression type of run or, know, your classic kind of fartleks. which is a short period of zone four and then a continuous job recovery at a lower intensity. So there's going to be all kinds of variety across your tried not try dot your run dot workouts and your try dot workouts. If you're using Triton and you're also listening to this podcast, you're more than welcome. so zone four for me is really one of those productive trainings. And as I said, it can be quite fatiguing, not as fatiguing as zone five and zone six. They're, they're hard for a different reason. And so the balance of those zones will be different. But your most productive training time, particularly for the shorter distance runners, anywhere up to kind of 10k half marathon will be those zone threes and particularly those zone fours. You're to get a lot of benefit from those training sessions, raising that ceiling of your performance without necessarily running for extra, extra time, either easy or running too much, too hard. It's all about that balance. We don't want to overtrain or under train or do too much volume, not enough. And so the zone four kind of really fits into that development cycle. As you hit your race preparation, Zone 4 still exists, but just in lesser and lesser amounts.

Carrie Tollefson: Mm-hmm Brady. I think this is a Well, at least for me, the athlete that I am. Sometimes it's hard to stay in zone four because you do, you still have to work. And, and sometimes when you start to work, you go above zone four or you fall, start to get tired. So you fall out of zone four. So what, how do you like, it's kind of a hard thing to grasp, but like, how do you help your athletes stay right there? Because you don't want to go too hard and then you don't want to not hit that zone. So it's, it's a tricky one.

Brady Hoover: It is. It's so zones, zones, say zones four and above are ones where you can't really, when you're in them, you can't let your mind wander. You gotta be, you gotta be on like. It's not the time that you're going to solve the world's problems. If I'm running in zone two, I got my notebook. It's like I'm pausing every 10 minutes because I get an idea and I'm like, I just solved the world's problems here. four is, my gosh, I got to be focused. I got to be looking at my watch. I got to listen to like, how do I feel? Where's my heart rate? Where is my breathing? How does this feel? The longer we stay in that zone, the more I have to kind of check my watch, right? Because as I mentioned earlier,

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. Ha ha ha! Going on Shark Tank! Yes.

Brady Hoover: earlier, six minutes, okay, I can still feel that. If I get a hold zone four for 10 minutes, yeah, one minute six to 10, I just have to check because the RPE is starting to increase and it's like, well, I feel like I'm running in zone five, but what's my pace, right? A couple of ways we can analyze that. have pace, we have great adjusted pace if you're running on like hillier terrain. We also have heart rate, which we're getting from those benchmark tests. So we know roughly where the heart rate is going to be. And then as Benny and you were saying, At the end of the day, it's paying attention. the metrics are great. But also being present in that zone four pace. How do I feel? How does this feel? What's my heart rate? What's my breathing? Doing like, sometimes I sing head, shoulders, knees, and toes, right? What's going on with my cadence? What's going on with my stride? What's going on with my forward lean? Are my shoulders relaxed? These are things that you have to focus on and be present to stay within that zone. you let your mind wander, and all of a sudden, this feels a little easier. Or, this feels a little harder because you increase the effort or decrease the effort. Being present is super important when we're talking zones four and above.

Carrie Tollefson: I think that's a nicer way to put it than when I said it's kind of an annoying zone. Like you, you do have to sort of zone in. You have to think about what you're doing. You know, we're to move on to zone five now, but this is a zone where the shorter intervals where maybe you don't have to put as much thought into it when you're, just trying to get through. So we move from threshold in zone four to zone five. Ben, tell us like the overview of zone five and what you call it and what first comes to mind when you think about this zone.

Ben Sommerville: for and I'm so glad you've given me Zone 5 to talk about because Zone 4 is my least favorite for a variety of reasons so yeah I just...

Carrie Tollefson: Oh really? Oh but Brady loves Zone 4. Oh okay, okay. I actually do like Zone 4, but okay, bring on the Zone 5, let's do it.

Brady Hoover: I love Zone 5.

Ben Sommerville: I like zone two and five. Yes, zone five has a variety of different names. The one that most people may be familiar with it being referred to is kind of like VO2 max. It is a mostly anaerobic activity. So you can expect your zone five intervals to be considerably shorter and allowing for extra rest in certain circumstances than you would for maybe zones three and for zones four. And because it is effectively a much more, it's effectively your maximal aerobic capacity. In the cycling world, most people assume a VO2 max effort is anywhere going to be sort of like five minutes, absolute tops. You can maintain this both physically and obviously mentally as well. And so as it's a far more anaerobic activity, you're relying not on necessarily brute force and brute strength, but real high focus, real high intent. You're moving at significant speed, certainly when you're running. And so your leg, both your stride length and your cadence may change quite significantly. compared to your previous zones. And so what that requires is much more attention and focus on your technique, on your form. So if you find that your legs are starting to get a little bit out of control, you've got to keep those arms up at the same time. If there's a decoupling between your arm movement and your cadence of your legs, you're going to find it very difficult, regardless of how fit your heart and your lungs are, to sustain a zone five or even a zone two pace, because it does become so critical, critically down to your form and your technique. As a result, the impact can be quite high. And so this is why these sort of zones are used sparingly and only in certain circumstances with plentiful recovery because it can increase the risk of impact related injuries. If you're just constantly doing zone five and zone six intervals, you're fast tracking your way without proper recovery to an injury. And so they are quite significant, but they are going to develop that performance ceiling. by having you go over and above that threshold. I love like zone two and three, that kind of sub threshold. I don't like threshold, but I love going above it for that short amount of time, because you get a really satisfying feeling at the end of those workouts, at the end of those intervals. go, wow, that was hard. Thank you very much. I'll move on with the rest of my day. So that's zone five, in a nutshell.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, yeah, they those workouts those workouts don't take forever either. mean, you know, like thinking of my 5k training for instance, like, you know, I would do five to seven 800 meter repeats or you know, at the time they were 220 so they were 440 pace. So that's that was kind of what my goal 5k pace was supposed to be and then I'd have to maybe two and a half minute recovery. So in that little workout it was only you know, 25 minutes of hard work basically. So Brady, like give us a couple examples if you wouldn't mind of like what run dot would prescribe and then how you would tweak it as a coach, like a zone five workout maybe.

Brady Hoover: Yeah, so typical, your typical zone five. I say this is like, these are the kind of explain it in layman's terms. I say this is zone five is about building a bigger gas tank, right? A bigger gas tank. not getting more efficient yet. I should say we're not getting more miles per gallon or kilometers per gallon. It's we're increasing that gas tank size, our capacity. That's why some people call it VO2 max aerobic capacity. What you typically see in run dot is minute or five minute intervals. So it's going to be at 5k pace or slightly faster than 5k pace. Back in my old days, I remember Yasso 800. So the time it takes to complete 800, which know, Kerry, you probably did a ton of these, if it takes two and a half minutes to complete an 800, well that's your recovery. In RunDot, it's four or five minutes followed by a four minute recovery. And that recovery is zone one. So yes, I am This is one of the one times I am walking after that and it's that satisfaction, right? It hurts, it hurts a lot, especially that third to fourth minute, it really burns. But then I keep thinking, I get to walk after this. I get to walk. I can walk for four minutes if I want to, right? I get to walk, have to be focused. When Rundle throws in that fifth minute, it's like, for minutes four to five, I am really hanging on for dear life. So again, this goes back to the training stress profile. How many intervals, we say a four minute interval at zone five, how many intervals will an athlete see? It really depends on their training stress profile as it relates to aerobic capacity work. And that is what's going to drive it. So somebody starting out in their first year with very little experience, they might see one of those or two of those. A more experienced athlete that's been running for years and years and years, they have a high training stress profile. see four by four minutes. They might see in the development phase, they might see five by four minutes. They might see the big Kahuna six by four minutes or you tack on that fifth minute six by five. And it's like, Oh, that's when, that's when the A race for Brady is a 13.1. I'm going to see some of those really tough, like I look at it and laugh and say, well, I could be these intervals. I'm definitely walking. And for my first one, I'm starting with the tail, the low end of my zone. and five, I'll do that first one and then that will evaluate how do I do that second one, that third one, and so on and so forth.

Carrie Tollefson: Do you ever, and I think Brady, you and I have talked about this, I think on one of our other podcasts, but do you guys ever say in with run. I want you, know, say someone is going to try to run an 18 minute 5k. Do you ever say, okay, we're gonna do zone five, but instead of saying zone five, say, well, I want you to run four by four minutes at 550 pace. Or do you not talk like that? Because I think some athletes really like to know numbers instead of just zones. So how do you tweak that? Because I know with run dot, it's a little different, but when you have coaches, one-on-one coaching plus run dot, like you guys do with athletes, how do you... Talk like that. What's the language like?

Brady Hoover: Yeah. So I'll say zone five. but every time they pull up their workout on their phone and they look what's today's workout, they click on that zone five. It's going to tell, it's going to tell us exactly that target pace, but it's going to show us the low end of that range and the high end of that range. So, where my fitness is at today, it's like, I'm holding five, five forties is my target pace. When I say zone five, if I see six by five minutes with a lower end is, is like five 55. So I'm going to start somewhere between 550 and 555. That first interval that's going to determine how do I want to tackle that next one? Maybe I want to go more towards target pace. And on that last one, if I'm feeling really good, okay, it's, you know, it's a 525 pace. That's where I'm going to go. So there's definitely a range and this comes from the benchmarking, and being consistent about doing those fitness tests when they do pop up on your schedule. And I know some athletes have a harder time with that than others, but it's super, super important because if you make improvements. And you skip that test that comes up, say, in four weeks. You're like, I'll just wait until it's eight weeks. Well, for the next four week block, if you're in a development phase, when you're training in zone five, you could have actually had adaptations occur. And now you're actually training in zone four. So you're not getting the right time and intensity to stress the body enough to make those adaptations that are going to change and build that bigger gas tank.

Carrie Tollefson: Everybody gets nervous for those hard efforts. I mean, you're not alone. And I think sometimes it's just those first couple minutes of doing them. And then you're like, okay, my gosh, I can really tell I've been doing all these great workouts. Ben, do you have anything else you want to talk about in zone five?

Ben Sommerville: I think it's really important for zones four, five and six. It's a really dynamic process when whether you're just working on your own using run dot, whether you're just running for running sake or you're working with a one-on-one coach, it is a dynamic process. Looking at that range and making a smart informed decision every time. Because what a lot of people fail to understand is that the fifth minute of a five minute view, like zone five interval, is exponentially more difficult than the first minute. And so you have to prepare for that. in the same way that the 60th minute of a zone to run is exponentially more difficult than the first minute of your zone to run, because you have that accumulation of fatigue, you have that impact, you've got the of the heaviness in your legs, the labored lungs, and that heart rate has decoupled away from your output as time's gone on. And so those ranges are there for a reason. And so I generally go to myself and to my athletes, that first interval, start at the bottom and move through. And then as that freshness kicks in, or that comfort kicks in, that familiarity with the effort, and you get accustomed to quite literally suffering for five minutes, that's when you can start move to the middle of the range, move to the top of the range. And then as Brady said, you've got one more interval left and it's five minutes. Anyone can do anything for five minutes, go nuts. Pretty much give yourself permission to go nuts. And even if you fail at three and a half or four minutes, you gave it a go. I would rather have someone find that opportunity to fail. than to constantly hold themselves back. There's some instances where you want to feel like you've finished a session with enough gas to do another one or two intervals. But when you've got only four or five, VO2 max, zone five intervals, however you want to call them, make the most of every single one and give yourself permission to fail. And this is where your freshness really comes in. If you're not physically or mentally fresh, you'll find these exponentially harder again. So it's a dynamic process. It becomes even more into play when we look at zone six. which we can talk about in a minute.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, you know, I think, like thinking back to all those workouts, it was always my coaches would actually get quite ticked if I would go too fast on the first one because then I just set myself up for, I don't like the word failure, but just making it a really, really hard day and probably entering zone six when I shouldn't have been or not being able to hit those zone fives. So I think that that's super smart, especially when you know, you have four or five of something. that first one should not feel like a race. It should feel like I'm getting myself into this workout. It's gonna be hard. It's gonna have you're gonna have to wake up but it should you want to go you want to go somewhere with those workouts. You don't want to kind of go down like this. You want to kind of get your get your speed up. Brady did you have one more thing you wanted to touch on?

Brady Hoover: Yeah, a couple of things. There's been talking about the training stress of like four minutes versus five minutes. It's funny in run. You might see, let's just say five by four minutes at zone five. That's 20 minutes in total, right? And I'm like, OK, that's going to be a hard workout. But then in the flip coin, you might see, I only have four intervals, but they're five minutes apiece. That workout is actually harder, even though the time spent in zone five because of that fourth to fifth minute is exponentially higher. Where training stress, like the first two minutes of a zone five interval, it's kind of linear. It just builds a little bit. You go from minutes two to three, it starts to take a corn. And you go from four to five minutes, and it's straight up and down on the intensity scale. at that and I see when my athletes get the five-minute intervals it's like okay start out slow on the first one like focus you need to be really present for this that that fifth minute is gonna it's gonna hurt but it's gonna prepare you better for that 5k 10k that you have coming up just around the corner

Carrie Tollefson: Yep, yep. That's so true. We got to learn. We got to get used to the world of hurt. But it is so fun when you can kind of handle it and then also look back at your old workouts and see the progress that you're having. All right, Ben, let's move to zone six. Why is it called zone six? And it is kind of scary like thinking about, okay, this is the highest zone you can go to.

Brady Hoover: you

Ben Sommerville: This is the fun one, realistically. said zone five was fun, but zone six is also just as fun because it's over before you know it. You get a really good satisfying kind of intensity and workout feeling. Yes, you have to be careful because of the impact, because of the speed that you're, effectively you're moving and therefore the impact going through your joints and your feet in particular. And so zone six has again, lots of different names, but it is effectively a neuromuscular activity. This is an all out sprint, realistically. This is your opportunity to be like Usain Bolt. or whoever your sprinting idol is. can't quite shamefully, can't think of a British sprinter right now. So I'm just going to use Usain Bolt as a good example because everybody knows who he is. That's a good one. Thank you. I'm letting British athletics down. I'm sorry. I will do better next time. And so you don't get a lot of opportunity to kind of really think about this one other than you got to really think about your form. And so it is just anywhere up to about 20, 30 seconds of an all out sprint.

Carrie Tollefson: Daryl Nida? There we go. huh. Yeah. She's awesome.

Ben Sommerville: Usually we try and prescribe it through Rundle as effectively a shuttle run. So it's an equal sort of recovery run in between and you'll do a sort of a continuous cycle of these. They're over before you know it. It's all about getting that leg speed up, challenging the inefficiencies and the gaps in your run stride whilst carrying great speed down the track or down the lane, wherever you're doing your run, for example. And so this is Top of the ceiling, absolute maximal output, neuromuscular, getting those fast twitch muscle fibers primed. Great opportunity if you are a shorter distance athlete for those surges and those sprints mid-race, particularly the beginning at the end, having the ability and the confidence to go, right, I can pull out a 20 second sprint out of the hat whenever I need to is a really good advantage. Those cross-country runners will realize that a zone six is pretty much every corner, every hill, because that's cross-country for you, you know? because there's just that many people around you and you've got to make quick decisions and move around the next group of people. Otherwise you'll get stuck in the mud and the rivers and the trees and all of that. I can't relate. I don't do a lot of cross-country. It's too muddy for me. so zone six, you'll feel very controlled for again, 20, 30 seconds. And then afterwards that heart rate will lag behind and then catch up because your heart rate can't physically respond quickly enough than the effort that you've put in and that the time you've completed that particular interval. And so it will feel relatively comfortable for a lot of people. As it stacks and you accumulate that fatigue over a session, you know, if you've got eight of these to do the first four may feel quite comfortable. Those last sort of six, seven and eight, again, they're exponentially more and more difficult than those first two or three. And that's when you've got to really pay attention to your form, really drive those arms, keep those feet nice and light and keeping that ground contact time as quick as possible. Again, just channel your inner Usain Bolt really get those arms driving. That's exactly why sprinters train their arms just as much as their legs, because a lot of momentum comes through the driving force of your arms just as much as your legs do. And so I don't know about Brady, but I certainly love Zone 6 because it feels easy for quite a lot of it until it doesn't.

Carrie Tollefson: Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. The kind of the build right Brady?

Brady Hoover: you Yeah, yeah, your body at that point is going into what we call oxygen debt, right? So it's like, yeah, for those 20 seconds down the 100 meters, I could hold a conversation. I don't want to because I'm working so hard. But then the cameras come into you and they're like, is, know, Carrie, how is that 100 meters? And you're like, you're bent over dying. Hold on, I need about a minute. What's tricky about the shuttles is it's 20 seconds on, 20 seconds off. And you could see as little as four of those in a row.

Carrie Tollefson: You want to throw up instead of talk. Yup, yup.

Brady Hoover: And then you can see as much as eight and how, know, training stress profile is going to drive how many, how many sets of eight or six or four you may see in a given workout. Also what's happening is it's, it's a 20 second recovery. So you're accumulating lactic, lactic acid, but you need about 40 seconds to fully clear it. So we're accumulating more lactic acid throughout those intervals. That's why those like six, seven, and eight really feel really tough because you're also got a lot of pooling of the lactic acid in there too. So it's like, if you see eight of them, it's like, OK, I'm going to go for maximal effort, but I'm going to hold back just a little bit until I get through four, and then I can really push that effort. you know, that's the way I'm usually talking about it. They're very beneficial for like Ben was saying, the last kick of a 5k, the last kick of a marathon or I love the Boston marathon, getting over heartbreak hill. it's like, I'm glad I did those shuttles, which gets sprinkled into my, race preparation phase here and there because they're beneficial for things like that. I got to pass this athlete. I'm sick of drafting off of them. only to find out, I go to make that pass and they get around them. wait, they were blocking a lot of, a lot of the head. wind that's here, let me get behind you. It's official for those surges and then because there's only that 20 second recovery you're practicing those deep belly breaths during that recovery. So it's like if I have to surge around an athlete or up and over a hill I know from my training from that 20 seconds recovery okay I'm gonna get back to my zone 3 or back to my zone 2 and I know how to drive that heart rate down through those deep belly breaths. So there's a lot of benefits to training in that zone.

Carrie Tollefson: Uh-huh. Do you teach people about deep belly breaths?

Brady Hoover: I talk about it from time to time. Yeah. And then it's like, when you really want to get a deep belly breath is great. the way to like really fill up those lower lobes of your lungs is to take a deep, you know, I'll take a deep belly breath. And then at the very end, I can get a little bit more oxygen in by breathing in through my nose. Like those, those last couple, like to really, I can only get so much through my, so much air on oxygen into my lungs through my mouth. I want a little bit more. It does spike the rate a little bit. If I take it through the the nose at the very end. The reward is that heart rate will come down a little bit quicker.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, yeah. Do you ever have in zone six, does run dot ever prescribe full recovery where you do, you know, almost like 400s at all out pace and then you take as long as you need to come back? Do they ever have any of that or is it always timed intervals of rest?

Brady Hoover: It is. It is always timed after you get through the set. There are always 20 seconds on, 20 seconds off in one given set, as little as four, as many as eight. But then you get three.

Carrie Tollefson: So there's just one kind of workout for zone six. Okay.

Brady Hoover: For zone six, yeah. We do have, you do get prescribed hill repeats that are technically zone five. But sometimes I have my athletes, I'll tell them, you know, go for the, instead of 60 seconds, go for 40, go for 45 seconds and let it be that zone six effort. And then you can recover for two minutes or two and half minutes and then, you know, do it again.

Carrie Tollefson: Yep. Yeah. Ben, when you are doing zone six workouts with RunDot, does it ever get easier or is it just that you get faster?

Ben Sommerville: I mean, it goes, it goes to say for every, every amount of training, it never gets easier. You just get better at suffering over time. That's the way I always see it. How I sort of talk to my athletes, whether they're newer experience, like it's never going to get easier. I zone four for 10 minutes or a zone six for 20 seconds on 20 seconds off for 10 minutes. It will never be easy because they're challenging your physiology in very deliberate ways in very intentional ways. You just get a. better at suffering through it, or ideally, you're just, when you're suffering and when you're doing it, it's not easier, but your output is better, i.e. you're going faster for the same relative effort. That's what we're all training for. The effort doesn't change, but our output, and maybe our perceived effort comes down, but the actual output goes up.

Carrie Tollefson: Nice. Zone six though, those workouts, you do have to make sure you pay attention to your hammies and to your calves and to all those areas that if we aren't properly warmed up, if we're not rested before we go into those workouts, those are the ones that kind of, they get mad pretty easy. So we want to make sure that we're doing the cool down properly, doing foam rolling and, and some light stretching and things like that after the workouts to make sure that we can come back, do our recovery runs and get back to the next workout that run daughter or your coach provides. Nutrition. Let's move on from Zone 6. I want to talk about nutrition and kind of like how you fuel through these workouts throughout the zones. Brady, do you want to start a little bit because it's a little different. Like some of them you might need some fueling and some it might just be what you've had before it or even to be honest like the night before or the morning before an afternoon workout those kind of things. So touch a little bit on fueling for these workouts.

Brady Hoover: Yeah, so feeling for zones four, five and six, I take those a little differently than, you know, a zone, zone two or a zone two with some zone three in there. Um, zone two, I may, I can get away with doing it fasted. Um, and some people will say, oh, you can do that's like, you do it, if you're a morning exercise or that's, that might be a workout, you can get away with doing fasted. then Stacey Simms has done some phenomenal research. So when we're talking about the female athlete, I never, say you need to eat before every workout. You know, I'm going by Stacey Simms. She's a phenomenal. researcher and she's like cutting edge so I'm leaning on her for how I advise my woman runners versus my men my men runners like I don't like to eat breakfast in the morning okay go if it's zone to go out and run if it's zone four or five or six yeah you're gonna want some carbohydrates in there It may be as little as a gel. want to get something in there. And then thinking about the night before, like you were saying, I always say if you don't plan ahead, you're kind planning to fail. It's like, OK, what is tomorrow's workout? Let me pull up Rundall. What am I? OK, I'm getting some zone five intervals. I'm going to want a little bit more carbohydrates tonight at dinner. I work out in the morning. If you work out in the afternoon, maybe you're going to have a little bit more carbohydrates at breakfast or at lunch. and say you have lunch at one o'clock but you're working out at five o'clock after you get out of work, you're probably going to want to like a snack about an hour before. So being intentional, looking ahead, planning ahead to give yourself the best success. It's zone five, zone six, very tough to do on an empty stomach. Been there, done that. Perceived effort goes up. Execution is a little bit harder. It's doable. It just doesn't feel great. And there's a little bit more muscle trauma that's going to happen too.

Carrie Tollefson: Mm-hmm. But on the flip side, also you have to time out that eating with zone five and six because you can toss your cookies pretty easy.

Brady Hoover: Yeah, yeah, yeah, if you want to if you want to have those, I would have said what's picking up in popularity? It's the is it the gummy nerds the nerd clusters? I hear about this. At least they're using feeling words like if you want that I think it was on one of your podcasts. I hear about that all the time. That was a phenomenal episode.

Carrie Tollefson: yes, nerd clusters, all the... Yeah. It is, was on C Tolle Run, we had the nutritionists on there, dietitians on there. Yeah. I know. And I don't even like them. The texture to me is like, is it supposed to be the hard nerds that we used to eat or the gummy, you know, whatever. I don't know if I like it.

Brady Hoover: I don't know. I'll stick to my, I'll stick to my, I'll do Swedish fish from time to time or Skittles, but, you know, it's, don't know.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. I mean it's fun, it brings out the kid in us I guess so...

Brady Hoover: Yeah, as I tell my kids, like, can I have this lollipop? Yeah, you can on the way to swim team or on the way home. Like when it's more beneficial than, yeah, you're sitting on the couch watching TV. I really don't want you to have that lollipop now because it's just going to, you know, you're just going to clear it. Time it around, you know, still have that lollipop, still have those things, but have it around, you know, where you don't feel as guilty about it because you're going to use it as energy.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yep, yep, the dieticians told us to have fun with food and you know if having your your bag of gummy clusters at lunch so you can you know go do your zone 5 workout at 3 like by all means do it. YOLO people is what the young kids say. I do have one more question and it's from an audience. It's our cool down question. So Sarah has said, she said, years of running with my Apple Watch, I'm getting the itch to move into a more specific model. She's maybe going away from it. She said she's checked out Garmin, Coros and a few other brands but doesn't know enough about what makes one better than the other. Can you help point her in the right direction? She's willing to spend but doesn't feel like she needs every bell or whistle in a sports watch. So what would you guys say for a watch out there?

Ben Sommerville: Brady, I'll let you take this one to start with for sure.

Brady Hoover: Yeah. I'll take this one. And it depends. I want to know what, you know, what are your goals? You know, what are your goals? you know, cause my advice is going to be a little different. Are you just doing, you know, 26.2 or shorter? Are you thinking about in a couple of years, you might want to get up the Elst traditions because as the watches go up in price, like Coros makes a great watch. Garmin makes a great watch. Polar makes it, you know, they're all great watches. what drives the price up is battery life. battery life, just like just wearing it every day or GPS battery life. some of the more expensive Garmin or Coros watches if you're in the ultra world. They have different GPS modes where if you're out in the trails, doesn't need to ping your watch for pace every second, every three seconds. It can slow it down to 30 seconds. That extends the battery life because you're not really moving too quickly there. So you're thinking, what do I want to do with it? As you go up in price, it has different features like are you going to eventually get into triathlons one day? You might want the Forerunner 700 or 900 series. You're just going to be a runner. You can look at the 200 series if it's Garmin and those are going to be significantly lower. You're only going to be running. You don't need like multi-sport. Well, you've got some Vivio, Garmin Vivio Active can be a great watch. Has shorter battery run time battery life. So really looking at like what is the GPS runtime? What events are you going to do? Are you a five hour marathon or a six hour marathon or are going to run a marathon? Like those things are important. I want to know because sometimes I forget the night before to charge my watch so I can sleep soundly if I'm at 50 % okay I'm gonna get through that marathon there's plenty of runtime on my GPS and then you start getting more like bells and whistles like can you connect third-party devices like a stride power meter to it most of the watches will allow for this connection now years ago it wouldn't Do you want push notifications showing up on your watch? mean, mine has it, but I turn it off because I don't want to be bothered by my watch. Do you want the ability to store music on your watch? So that will bring the price up. So that's really like, what features are you looking for? You know, just running some of the BareBones Coros watches and Garmin watches are great investment. Oftentimes you can find good deals like used in Facebook Marketplace and stuff as somebody's upgrading to the next, you know, the next thing you can usually get a \$600 watch for 50 % off that was used or even less than that if it's a couple years old.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, interesting. Okay. Ben, do you have any other tips on that? What do you use?

Ben Sommerville: I think Brady's coming. Well, I use a Garmin at the moment, but I'm in the process of probably upgrading to a Coros. I just generally find you get better value for money out of a Coros, regardless of the feature level you want. Garmin are great, but I feel like there's far too many options and it gets confusing. And that price bracket difference can be unnecessarily large without a real kind of understanding of why. No hate on Garmin here. I have no personal affiliation with any brand here, nor do we realistically do either. yeah, so as Brady said, look at what features you need. And then if you find that there's a couple of different brands that do the same sort of features for a similar sort of price, then your real differentiator will be that kind of added value. Do they have nicer colors? they give you the ability to change the strap? to a different fabric or this, that, and the other? Do they have other perks from being a customer from that company? Do they have other affiliations with other brands? You look at all the little extras that I put my marketing hat on and go, if I was that brand, how I would be trying to incentivize customers to purchase my watch and not X, Y, and Z competitors. so for you, Sarah, looking, you're clearly willing to spend, which is great. So just find the features. And then if you get a kind of a plateau across brands. Just find the little niceties really, the aesthetic things. Does one have a better color or better customization than the other? And then just have fun with it. The other differentiator, if you're going from an Apple watch is you may be used to wearing the Apple watch much more closer to 24 seven than you would just a running watch for running alone. So you have to consider whether or not you want to wear that watch as a watch also for the rest of your day and not just for running. I don't subscribe to the wearing my running watch all day. I have a running watch for running and I have a week for all day. And so you have to make that consideration differentiator as you're looking across brands as well. But it sounds like you're in a great position because you are willing to spend, which is great. I'm not going to try and say buy in a thousand pound Garmin. Look at Coros first. My personal opinion, get great value for money.