Training Effect

Ha! I also found 217 instead of 183 - thanks

In my training I'm used to do intervals of 1km at about race pace, well below my VO2max showed by the Garmin watch. At this speed Firstbeat considers this workout impacting aerobic threshold or tempo, but it considers that they have little anaerobic benefit.

In the white paper of Firstbeat that you shared above, they suggest to execute the intervals at 105-115% of VO2max. According to my footpods Runscribe that can give an estimation of this metric, I have to run the intervals about 30 seconds faster than race pace. If I want to have a good anaerobic benefit, it's difficult with 1 km intervals because I can't sustain that speed for the whole km. I have to do 300 - 400 - 500 meters intervals.

In any case, 30 seconds faster than race pace it's quite hard for me. But I want to try this new type of workout and  see if it brings benefit to my training.

I'm not sure about your particular situation, a distance you train for, or other pertinent details. 

As far as Firstbeat piece is concerned, if you want maximum anaerobic benefit, you need to do training that targets specifically anaerobic energy system. Said system kicks in for high to maximum intensity effort lasting from 30-40 sec up to 2 min. Does it mean it shuts down after that? No. But it will be increasingly complemented by aerobic system, which means anaerobic pathway is not trained as effectively. 

Hence, 400-600 m hard intervals, with adequate recovery between them, is what you do for maximum anaerobic TE. 

I usually do half marathons, and of course for this type of race the most important energy system to train is the aerobic capacity (tempo, threshold and VO2 max) and near races my training has the goal to improve resistance and aerobic performance. But I'm curious to see if changing my training plan and training also the anaerobic part (that I usually neglect) could bring some benefit in my health or in my performance in half marathon times.

Mirko_Italy said:

It seems that one has to push really hard to get an anaerobic training effect

Is that really as surprising as you make it appear to be? In terms of energy systems there are two anaerobic types - one good for about 10s (think 100m sprint) the other for around 2 mins of hard out effort (400m to 800m). Anything else is aerobic. 

Out of curiosity, what Is the highest anaerobic training effect you reached and which kind of workout you did?

Based on my high perceived effort and my low anaerobic training effect (only 3), there are two possibilities:

- the watch overestimated my VO2max or I set wrong HR max

- High anaerobic TE can be obtained only by athletes who are used to do a lot of high intensity training and not by amateur runners like me that are not prepared to execute so hard workouts. In the contrary, it's quite easy for me to have high aerobic training effect, in my long runs I have often 5=overreaching

I've just done a duathlon today. The second run I had aerobic 5 and Anaerobic 2.8 - Duathlon 2nd run - I used the 945 today for a change.

I'd not class myself as anything other than an amateur but I can work hard when in an event. Otherwise my default position is lazy. 

There must be something in my settings that confuses Firstbeat or something wrong.

In the whitepaper they say that 10x400 at 105% VO2 max should bring between 3 and 4 anaerobic TE

Today I did a 15 km easy run with 60 seconds sprints every 1 km (Total 12 sprints)

The speed of sprints was about 110% of my VO2 max.

At the end I got 3,7 aerobic  TE (in my opinion it Is too high, it was really an easy run and I'm quite used to this distance) and only 2,1 anaerobic TE.

Maybe I  should lower in the settings my max Heart rate from 190 to 185. It's not easy to know the correct max Heart rate.

Out of curiosity, what was an average heart rate for your easy run? How high did you heart rate get during sprints?

Also, I think you answered your question above when replying to me. Kind of.

Are you positive your max HR is correct? Did you get it in the lab or after a all out effort? How often, if ever, do you reach that number in your training? 

And yes I would agree that high anaerobic TE is for serious pro athletes who often do anaerobic work and a lot of it. Also, people on the younger side, like below 30.

PS TE of 3.7 for 15 km run with 15 60-sec sprints sounds perfectly valid, even if your heart rate was in low aerobic zones most of the time.

I think sometimes the system doesn't fully understand your recovery from the sprint period. I did an easy run today (zone 2) with 5 surges that lasted anywhere from about 1:20 down to around 30 seconds. I ended up with this 

Anyway the "cruise" and "recovery" portions of the run contribute to load and increased average heart rate, but i think the system over estimates the aerobic TE. That said, it wasn't that "hard" to get a bit of anaerobic effort from today's short/easy run.