On this edition of RUN with Coach Parry, Brad & Lindsey are joined by one of the members of the Coach Parry Online Community Garth Willis to chat about using a power meter to enhance your training and racing.

We also hear from James 'Hobbo' Hobson who has had a tough week and is struggling to get his heart rate up while doing intervals as part of his #BiogenJourney

We also announce the next winner of our #BiogenJourney competition and how you can win 3 months access to the CoachParry Training platform

Transcription

 

BRAD
Welcome on to this edition of RUN with Coach Parry. My name is Brad Brown. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on board today. And we get to chat something pretty interesting today talking about power. And if you have anything to do with the cycling fraternity, you'll know that power has been the rage over the last few years, and it's slowly starting to infiltrate it's way into the running community with the advent of running power metres and as you will hear on today's podcast, the coach Lindsey Parry is a huge fan of running to power. And we catch up with Garth Willis to talk a little bit about his running and how he's using a power metre to improve his running. That's all coming up on today's show as well. Garth, welcome on to RUN with Coach Parry.

GARTH
Morning, thanks very much, it's great to be able to join you.

 

Garth's Running Background

 

BRAD
Garth, we've got the coach with us as well. I'm going to hand you over to Lindsey and in just a short while but before we do that, let's find out a little bit about you. Tell us a bit about your running background, has running always been a big part of what you do and your life?

GARTH
It's been a big part of my life for a long time and when I was at school I enjoyed sport. I always thought of running as something that you had to do in order to be fit to play sports and sports had to involve a ball. Then going into varsity, sports got more involved on the social side and I ended up getting into a bet with a friend in about 1996, he said that there's no way I'd ever be able to run Comrades and so six months later I did. And since then running's been a part of my life. I found especially with having children and work demands, running as a sporting option fits in well. I can do it at five in the morning, I can't play soccer or cricket at five in the morning. So it's become an important part of keeping me sane.

BRAD
I think for many South Africans, a bet and a few beers and Comrades is how they start running. It's just like, oh, we're taking it seriously. It's so funny how many people are probably nodding listening to this that that's their exact story. Tell me about the juggle and that's one thing that people struggle with is having a career, having a family and still getting time to train because you're not a plodder, a back of the packer like me, you take this thing pretty seriously and you got some big goals

GARTH
I really enjoyed the escape. So it's a running group that gets me out in the morning, when I run by myself often I turn over and hit the snooze button. But committing in a WhatsApp the night before and knowing that there might be guys or girls waiting in the car park for me, it gets me up in the morning and that's the hardest part of the run. Once you're out, it's a great time of the day and it's good having a bit of banter and a bit of an escape from whatever other stresses there are in life. So the 5am run with the group in the morning has become part of life and then obviously that fires up a bit of the competitive juices as well, and a few silly Strava segments becomes part of it and before you know it, it's addictive.

 

Short term and long term goals

 

BRAD
I love it. Garth, tell me about some of the goals. What are you chasing? What's the short term and long term sort of hopes for your running?

GARTH
So I've always really enjoyed the shorter races, I like the ability to go out, have a bit of a gamble in the first half and hope to hang on and surprise myself with the time. I think because of that I've battled with the longest stuff, especially with Comrades. I've run 3 Comrades, 2 of them I had nightmare second halves, which were my fault for getting the pacing wrong. So the goal is really over the next nine months is to try and bring myself to convert a more aerobic approach to training into my running for the longer races.

It's tempted me out of a 14 year hiatus from Comrades, and I want to do the next one and I'd like to do the next seven. More immediate goals are I'd like to break 40 for 10K's. I've run 40:01, so I'd like to shave two seconds off. I'd like to run a good Comrades and then I'd like to run a good marathon in Feb, and then have a Comrades that I actually enjoy. So be less focused on a time and more focused on having a good run, running fairly even splits and hopefully enjoying the day out so that I actually do the next 7 or more.

BRAD
I love it. So Lindsey, I'm going to hand Garth over to you. You've obviously sent a questionnaire through to get some background and I know you've got a couple of questions and I know Garth's brought a couple of questions for you. So it's over to you, coach.

 

Setting up your zones

 

LINDSEY
Yeah, so I've also had the fortune of, or maybe his friends would say misfortune, of having done a long run with Garth. So I do have a little bit of insight into kind of what he's been doing. And you've covered most of what was in the questionnaire, but part of the reason we've got Garth on here is because he's got some very specific questions around how to get the best out of his running using a power meter, or training for running with power. So I think that's really where we will focus on. He is on a structured plan, has asked a lot of questions already around how we should be doing certain types of workouts and pacing and it comes through from his description there that really one of the things that he's trying to figure out is how to get the best out of pacing and to learn that.

Then I think the next part of that process is getting the balance of the training right which is, for me, getting the balance right is literally all in the pacing. So I'm going to focus the talk then on the questions that Garth has asked, and he did send us through earlier and most of them I have got some good answers for and some of them I don't have complete answers for, but you know, at least it starts a discussion. And I'm also kind of learning about power as I go, and it is a relatively new parameter in running. Right. So that's an intro to what we're going to be discussing. I'm going to run through the questions, Garth, and then obviously, if any other question pops up as I'm speaking, or you don't quite understand how I explain something, then just stop me because this will be a little bit more one sided I guess than some of the other calls that we've done. You know, that's just because you know what you want out of this and let's try and cover that in as much detail as we can in the time that we've got.

So, the first question is actually one of the more important questions and that is setting up your zones and how to set them up and you have done the three nine minute test that they recommend on Stride. And I have used that too, to set up my initial zones and then subsequent to that have actually used more sustained effort. So 10K and 15 k races and then I extrapolate basically what is my threshold, which is what we're trying to figure out. There's plenty of evidence to suggest, not just specifically to running, but that the shorter sort of FTP types of workouts tend to over predict that threshold slightly.

That doesn't concern me too much because later on down the post you talk about the range being quite wide and that really is the point is that our physiology ranges are quite wide, and they aren't black and white lines, which kind of go 'Okay, well now we're aerobic and now we're completely anaerobic', there tends to be quite a fairly broad transitional area. So I still feel that any test done needs to be done properly, and a test like a three nine minutes does take a little bit of learning.

And so in answer to your question, you feel like you gave it your best in the three minutes, that your 9 minutes was possibly a little bit conservative. On one hand, it may give you a slightly closer answer to your true threshold. But on the other hand, I feel like let's do a test and do it properly, use it to set up your initial zones and then when you do do a hard 5k, 8k, 10k, we can then sort of tweak those slightly and bring them into a range and down the line that will be the better way of tracking and changing and adjusting power.

So I'm fairly happy with the power zones that are recommended by Stride on the Stride Power Centre and I'm also quite happy with the zones that are recommended on Training Peaks, but to give you an idea, so that you can sort of quantify in your mind, what does that all mean? I like to do the sort of recovery and endurance work at around about 80%, or just under 80% of your calculated threshold power. I like to do a little bit of work at or just under threshold work and those will be, you know, your fast finishes, your tempo runs, that type of run, I like to do a little bit of work in there. And then we work at about 105% for sort of one mile type of repeats, we'd probably work at about 107-110% for 800 to 1000 metre repeats, work at about 115-120% for 400 metre repeats.

Yeah so that kind of gives you an idea, for 2 minute hill repeats it's about the same as 1k repeats. When we're working with power, obviously pace is very different. And when we're doing power hills, so one minute hills with focusing on power, then it's probably quite similar, just a bit higher than 400. So, hopefully that gives you enough info to start really playing around with that power meter and being in the right zones.

 

Equal effort vs equal work

 

Your second question is probably the most important question that you asked. So you're buying into this concept of equal effort, but is equal effort the same as equal work? In terms of energy expenditure, the answer should be yes. Okay. But in reality, there's a few practical points that you do make in here and that is that you have to run the uphills too slowly and too fast on the downhill. So I feel that is exactly the point of power is that it does slow you down on the downhills and it actually forces you to run where you're supposed to run.

Now on the easy runs, that is an extremely useful tool because a hill, and this is something that most people cannot conceptualize, is that a hill can be very easy if you run it slowly enough. So when you're doing your easy runs, then I would say you need to focus on keeping that hill reasonably close. I would probably be comfortable with it sliding up about 10, 15 watts, somewhere around there. Okay. And on the downs, you're absolutely right that you would have probably too much of an eccentric load if you were to be exactly in the power zone, so the exact same with a climb probably about 10 watts lower than what you would be on the flat. That sort of band really pulls you into ensuring that the whole run is in fact easy.

And then when we're running in races, I think that's possibly for me, and obviously we've discussed a little bit on the forum about this, but possibly for me the major difference between last year November when I ran New York and this year September when I ran Cape Town, the real difference was that I absolutely bought into the average power on the hills and that meant that although on the day, Cape Town day, I didn't feel amazing at the start, I really had one of my best marathons that I've had in years because I really just felt so good when I was supposed to feel good, because I really did behave and listen to the power when I went uphill.

And at New York, I did precisely what you're talking about here, is that in a race, it's very hard for you to hold yourself back in the in the race and in New York I absolutely unravelled spectacularly in the last 5k's. And I could feel it happening to be honest because every hill was hard. So I totally buy into that equal effort and I feel like that is the most critical aspect of the power metre. And I've said this to you before and I know that you've read some reviews that you do need to adjust that thinking when you are running into hill, into wind. And again if I use Cape Town, I found that the wind impacted my power by about 15 watts, so the same effort in the wind was measuring 285 watts and when I was out of the wind that was just over 300 watts. So you do have to take that into account and experience will teach you how to just tweak that number when it's very windy.

 

Pacing on hills

 

GARTH
Sorry, if I can just jump in there, what I'm battling to get my head around is the range and paces, so I can fully buy into keeping the power consistent on a fairly level route. It's been a big help on easy runs but I paid specific attention this morning, it was a recovery run, for me that's targeting 260 watts or about my my math heart rate of 135. And on the flats that meant I was averaging 5:10-5:15, on the downhills about 4:20-4:25 and on uphills it was seven minutes a km. And when I was doing the uphill, I thought let me stick to it, I understand this is a recovery. I know what I'm trying to get out of the session. It felt incredibly slow.

The interesting thing for me was that over the course of the run, I actually averaged 5:15. I averaged my flat pace, I felt like I'd run a lot slower than that. So it kind of reinforced the concept of even power in achieving the kind of targeted average time. But in a race, that range, if instead of targeting 5:15, I was targeting let's say for a 21 4:15, that would mean that if the pace bands move on a linear basis, I would then, instead of seven minutes a k up the hill, I'd be running six minutes a k up the hill, which would feel a bit slow, but on the downhill I have to run 3:25 which would feel a bit fast. And so I'm battling to get my heart behind the science that on a hilly route, that I actually should be targeting that wider range of paces across the uphills and the downhills. Are you saying I should ignore that and I must trust the science?

LINDSEY
Yes. Look, I am a little bit surprised in your case that the difference is quite that large. Because if I look again, I mean most of my experiences is on myself, and then I do have a couple of people that I coach specifically on power, but on a run, I typically average quite close to what you are averaging. But the difference is that the same power on the flat, I'm running up the hills at considerably faster than seven minutes a k, probably more like 5:40-5:45.

So part of that could be, and it'll speak to what comes a little bit later in some of your questions, as part of that could be speaking to efficiency, particularly when you run uphill and it could well be that in particular when you run uphill you are running especially inefficiently but, you know, time will tell and it should get better. In a race there's definitely a little bit of wiggle room and that's where I was talking about maybe 10-15 watts higher and 10 to 15 watts lower on the downs.

And again, the shorter the race I think you surprise yourself that you may well be able to get down to those the 3:20s. But yes, I would in the initial stages really just trust it because then you start to see it as you have done on your easy runs. When you've got to run 7 minutes a k up, that feels like it's impossible, I'm not going to get any near, but at the end of the run, it's confirmed on heart rate and everything else.

GARTH
Perfect, thanks. I think part of it might have been tired, dead legs, so maybe the range is wider than normal so I'll keep an eye on that.

 

Incorporating some strength training

 

LINDSEY
Yeah. Okay. So we've only got seven minutes left, so let me get into the very complicated bits here for you, and what should you be tackling over time. You definitely want to keep things like strung out legs, and your form power in your leg spring really tells you a lot about your efficiency. So those are things that should improve over time. And if they are not improving over time that may point to a need to get into the gym and actually do some strength training, which is exactly in this very block of training that I'm doing that's exactly where I am.

So I've done a lot of, you know, speed work and hills and those sort of things also do help with that spring stiffness and form power but I kind of feel like I've done really good training and when I compare to the norms there's a lot of room for improvement there for me. So I'm in the gym working quite hard now. Honestly I haven't gone and had a look at the numbers but I can feel the difference when I'm running. So I'm pretty certain that when I sit down and have a chat with Neil, my coach, I think we'll see some improvement there. So these things will improve and you can track them.

There's an app, I think it's called Cheetah, it helps you to track heart rate versus speed versus power. So that is probably a great app for you to go and have a look at so that you can graph all those those things in one place and track them over time. And hopefully, as we work with our developer we'll pull that sort of stuff into our app, and you will be able to have graphs to compare all three or any parameters together. So yeah, we've got a couple of minutes late. So I don't know if you've got another question that I can maybe get for you. I know that's quite a lot of information to process in a short period of time.

 

Running a long run in your 10k training

 

GARTH
Thanks very much. I do have another question. And it's around running the Tough One. I don't want to race it, I haven't been doing specific training for it, but I want to use it as a first test of my ability to actually behave in a race in the first half of the race. I've done Tough One before, I got to halfway thinking that I'm ahead of track and that's the low point altitude wise in the run, not knowing the second half. So this time I want to use it as a bit of a dress rehearsal for a longer run, running more consistently. I just wanted to get your thoughts on whether throwing that in in the middle of my 10k training programme is smart, and what I could do to get the most out of that as a training run, how I should be approaching it?

LINDSEY
So if you treated it as a purely long run, it's going to give you like endurance that you cannot believe in a 10k run. Okay, so I did answer that on the forum before is that even the fast programmes are a little bit conservative because I don't have interaction with people. But in this sort of specific case, absolutely, I would encourage doing a 32 K run, but you need to set it in your kind of zone 2. And because it's a race you'll end up probably near the top of zone two. That's okay but you've just got to make sure that you don't creep in and really be disciplined and don't go into zone three.

And then it's going to give you an absolute brilliant little test case for how you feel the next day and how your overall pacing is in the race. Kind of just as an interest point for you, if you were setting out to race the race and this will still give you the sense if you do the thing easy and stick to your zones is that what I've figured now, specifically from Cape Town, is that if you stick to your power in the first quarter, you will warm up really nicely and then start to feel good. If you stick to your power in the second quarter, you'll feel like it halfway that you really should be going want to go but don't. Stick to your power for that third quarter, then in the fourth quarter you can literally ignore your power and really go for it.

Now you obviously won't do that at RAC, but I think you'll get the sense of what I'm talking about because you will suddenly get to where you just turn off Main Road and think to yourself well hell, you know we shouldn't feel like this, every time I run a race. But the principle will be if you race you will be slightly more tired and whatever, but you will still feel that strength if you use the pacing mechanism like that.

GARTH
Lindsey, I was gonna treat it as a progression run. So I was gonna run three quarters easy. And then open up for the last quarter. You saying I shouldn't do that, I must rather just treat it as a long run. I mean is there gradient progression long runs?

LINDSEY
Where is this in relation to your planned 10k?

GARTH
Well, I don't actually have a planned 10k, I wanted to do speed work, and I'm going to start a marathon training programme in this mid December. So what I'm going to do instead of a 10 k race is I'm going to run an 8k time trial, probably second week of December.

LINDSEY
So that would be three weeks after this. So then I wouldn't do that. And if it was four weeks you possibly got away with it and as you were talking, I was thinking okay, if you're not actually going to race the 10 and then go into the marathon programme and yes there's loads of benefits and progression runs for marathon training, but no, three weeks out, pure, pure long run and then in that 8K you really will feel, you probably feel like you run a road. Your aerobic system will be right where it needs to be, that speed will hopefully be your limiting factor.

BRAD
Yeah Garth, thank you for your time. I've thoroughly enjoyed listening to the two of you guys talking about it because I'm nowhere close to the level that you two run and yeah, I need to get myself a power metre. I need all the help I can get. Sounds amazing. Garth, thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. Let us know how it goes. I'm keen to see how you progress at the tough one and if you do manage to behave because I think if you do, you're going to have an amazing run.

GARTH
Excellent. Thanks very much. And congratulations to you guys on the platform. I'm really enjoying it.

BRAD
No worries. Thank you for supporting us. Just finally on that, you're one of our lifetime members, tell me a bit about why you joined, what are you loving about it?

GARTH
I'm really enjoying the structured programme, it stops me from experimenting and tinkering with my own theories. I'm enjoying the ability to get guidance from coaches and I enjoy the forum discussions and the podcasts, to hear from other runners and learn from their experiences. Overall I've found that that's all helping a lot.

BRAD
Brilliant.