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is HR zone 3 Aerobic or Grey Zone?

ir77
over 4 years ago

setting up my HR zones based on LTHR test that i did for myself (warmup 10 mins, run all out for 20, take avg of last 20 mins ans that is your LTHR and then back up the %) my watch is telling me that Zone 3 is aerobic zone and obviously counts a lot towards aerobic progress.

yet anywhere i read online, and even the automated plans that garmin provides you, everything is saying that one should run in zone 2 "easy" and zone 3 is a grey no-mans land and should only be run in 10% of all your running times.

shouldn't garmin then be calling it something else and not an Aerobic zone, aerobic zone to me means that you should do all your excercise in zone 3.

where am i getting confused?

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    There is conflicting advice out there and garmin has an extra zone compared to some. In my experience do your easy runs in Z2 blue and your intervals in z4/z5. I only seem to sit in zone 3 for half marathon/full marathon races

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    It is confusing, but is also true. In Z3 you still use quite a lot of oxygen to exercise and it gives more training benefit than Z2 - the problem is that it's not an easy zone. Many of the athletes who aren't aware of the zones spend too much time in it, giving them more fatigue than increase in fitness. Which is why the whole polarized training model topic became so popular. 

    If you use it right, Z3 can give a lot of training boost to existing plan. For example, 1-2x per week doing a Z3 moderate run is a great a way to build aerobic base at the beginning of the season, which will then allow for bigger and more intense training load in mid-season. 

    There's more theory on zones in this article - theathleteblog.com/.../