In the last chapter we went over the race demands mentioned in reverse engineering our goals: and discussed that many are the primary reasons athletes bonk:
Not enough energy (or poor pacing and/or poor fueling: too little and too much → gut distress a major factor as well!)
Muscle fatigue (poor pacing)
Muscle spasm cramping
Dehydration (also can lead to cramping)
Muscle damage
We focused our attention on the energy needed and fatigue (lactate) created at different intensities.
That’s the beginning of training zones!
Simply put, training zones are just categorized levels of intensity that have a unique training stimulus. We emphasized the training time spent around and below the first lactate inflection point or “aerobic threshold” because spending time here will increase mitochondrial and capillary density! However, there can be multiple training stimuli that happen at each “zone”.
Before we dive into these zones, it’s important to understand there’s no perfect zone system because:
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