[00:00:00] Most runners quit zone two training right before the magic happens. Week seven is when it all clicks, but only if you avoid these key beginner mistakes first. In this episode, I’ll be going over the six mistakes that stop your aerobic base from growing backed by science. What to expect week by week during your first seven weeks of low heart rate training, how to find your real zones.

[00:00:21] End that magical zone two and stick to the process that builds lasting speed for as long as possible. Why your zone two pace feel so slow and why? That’s the whole point and a huge bonus you’ll get a free training plan. ’cause I love giving away free stuff. I’m Daren D Lake run coach and distance running nerd.

[00:00:37] Of the last 30 years I used to run 800 meters, that’s two laps around the track back at college and all I had was pure speed and no endurance and that weakness. Bothered me to this day. So then I hit 31 years old. I decided to spend 16 weeks fixing it with nothing but zone two, the result, I ran a sub three hour marathon and finished an Ironman in 10 hours while being mostly in zone two heart rate.

[00:00:59] But what if running slow could actually make you faster? Sounds backwards, right? But zone two, heart rate training, it’s not optional. It’s the base that everything else sits on. So if you wanna run farther or faster with a low heart rate, zone two becomes that aerobic. Foundation, the concrete, the pillars, everything.

[00:01:15] It also becomes your protection against injury and burnout. And most runners either get it wrong or they quit before it starts working, because I almost did too. Now I reap the benefits and I do a so two block every year, anywhere from 6, 10, 12 weeks or more. And I use it to reset and rebuild. So what does zone two heart rate training actually look like?

[00:01:35] Why does it feel so weird at first? Alright, zone two is your aerobic base pace, the one where you can talk pretty easy, breathe through your nose mostly, and feel like you can go on forever. I like to think of it as you just jump on a meeting or a call with someone while you’re doing zone two and you’re able to hold a conversation with them, but so you can.

[00:01:53] Speak normal sentences, but they would know that you’re running or doing something else to get your breathing up. I’ll let your creative imagination think about what those things are. But to get scientific, it’s about 70 to 80% of your max heart rate if you know your max heart rate, and for most people, it’s a round marathon pace.

[00:02:10] A little bit slower, depending, maybe a little bit faster. And if you don’t know your marathon pace, you can plug a recent race into the VO calculator, which I did a whole episode on. Go check that out up here, or link below in the show notes or the description. Think of it as your engine building zone, the place where your body learns to burn fat.

[00:02:28] Well save energy and go long without breaking down most of your lifelong endurance. It lives here. It has to. You can’t have a building built on air or built on feathers. It has to have hard, concrete and steel dug deep into the ground. And once the engine’s built, it never leaves you and the science to back this up very hard.

[00:02:47] A 2024 meta-analysis. So a study of many studies, 400 studies were actually studied. They found something pretty cool. The less trained you are when you start zone two, the bigger your gains. If you’re coming in slow outta shape, feeling like you have no base, congratulations, you’re about to see the biggest improvement.

[00:03:04] Your mitochondria responds faster. So the mitochondria are the powerhouse of cells as we learn in biology class. Uh, those are the things that help the cells do what they need to do, and your capillaries grow quicker and your aerobic capacity jumps harder than someone who’s already fit. So it’s actually harder for me to make my zone two fitter because I’ve been doing it for 14 years.

[00:03:23] Whereas you, if you started out, you’ve never done it, you’re gonna shoot right up. Being a beginner isn’t bad here. It’s actually your biggest advantage. Zone two rewards, consistency over starting speed though. So zone two is this magical engine builder. Why do so many runners mess it up? Enter the six common mistakes.

[00:03:42] Mistake number one, using watch based optical heart rate monitors. To get accurate heart rate readings, I highly suggest a wearable and trusted. HR monitor heart rate monitor from a legit company. Chest straps and arms straps are the best ones. Garment makes them wahoo, kross, and there’s a bunch of others.

[00:03:58] Polar Your watches optical sensor is not accurate for running. It’s mostly accurate for sitting around sleep walking, but don’t rely on it When you get up to zone two, zone three, start running fast. It is way off. It’s worth the money to buy a proper heart rate strap. On your arm or chest and if you take care of it and clean it regularly, it should last you for multiple years, 2, 3, 5 years depending on how much you use it and how much you sweat in it, and you know what else is an investment.

[00:04:24] Your running future. Do that by getting my run far and long with low heart rate free training plan. That explains all these concepts in this episode and lets you use them out in the real world. Get it at the QR code here. Link description or the show notes below. Let’s get onto mistake number two, using the generic 220 minus age formula for heart rate zones.

[00:04:45] So this mistake, it’s not science, it’s a guess, a generic one. And for some, and sometimes. I’d say many people, this is as much off as 20 or even 30 BPMs. If you’re training by a bad number and using bad data, everything else breaks down. So to find your zone two, try to do one or two of the tests that give you an estimate of your heart rate zones.

[00:05:06] Uh, it like programs it for you. I’ll go over those tests shortly, so just stay tuned. Do not rely on Strava or Garmin or smart watches to make generic zones for you ’cause they’re generic. They’re usually not accurate and over time they can either overtrain or under train you through a lot of testing and a lot of experience.

[00:05:21] I found out that my maximum heart rate is way higher than most people at my age and my resting heart rate is actually way higher than it’s supposed to be. For someone that as fit as I am, not humble brag, but I am quite fit and my what? Resting heart rate is always 10 BPMs higher than a lot of people around me that have similar fitness.

[00:05:38] Basically, my zones are shifted up about seven to 10 BPMs again. Than the average human. And on top of that, I have a really strong zone two from doing it for the last 14 years consistently, which makes things even more custom and lopsided and weird. My zone two is very wide. It’s wider than most people’s Zone two.

[00:05:55] I have a very good zone two engine, so I need to train to that custom zone rather than some generic algorithm. Mistake number three, letting. Pace dictate your effort. Heart rate is how your body responds to effort. It’s the output. It is not the GPS conditions change and your heart rate zones don’t. On hot, humid, or windy days or after poor sleep, your pace will slow down at the same effort.

[00:06:17] That’s not failure, that’s feedback. So don’t go around being like, oh, I feel great. I’m just gonna run at zone three. That is not true. You need to have a very accurate chest trap or armband and. Take things into account and be like, am I actually in zone two? Am I lying to myself? Zone two effort versus what all the data’s saying.

[00:06:38] Mistake number four, living in the gray zone and doing too much zone three and zone four work. So the gray zone, it’s not easy. It’s not hard. It’s very easy to get into though. For a lot of new runners, myself included, you can just slide into it. It’s just not productive without. A proper aerobic base to build on.

[00:06:54] You’re pushing too much to recover and not enough to improve, and it feels like you’re training, but in actuality, you’re just spinning wheels in the mud going nowhere and not so fast. I did an episode on the Gray Zone. Up there or go below and check out that in the description links ’cause it goes deeper on the gray zone because the gray zone, it’s an interesting one.

[00:07:12] It’s very polarizing and very nuanced. Some people, they also do too much VO two max work, which is zone four for heart rate purposes. During base building, this creates fatigue that stops you from piling up enough easy volume. You need recovery capacity to do high volume of zone two that actually builds your base.

[00:07:30] Save the hard stuff. Before races, 10 to 12 weeks out, we’re building base so that we can run far with a low heart rate. Mistake number five, ignoring external factors. So all the stuff outside of your control, literally outside heat, caffeine, dehydration, poor sleep, stress, they all spike your heart rate. If you’re not adjusting for them, you’re not training in zone two.

[00:07:50] Or try to not have so much caffeine before runs. Try to not run in hot, humid weather. Try to not be dehydrated. Try to get good sleep. Try to manage your stress so you can actually manage those things so then you can run better in zone two. Mistake number six, giving up too soon. Zone two feels like failure at first.

[00:08:07] You’ll feel slow. You’ll doubt it. You’ll wanna push. But if you bail and quit early, you’ll never experience that shift. And it happens and it’s like a click. It’s like it’s on oven toaster, on ding, like it did for me. Speaking of someone never experiencing something, do you wanna help another self coach runner do some dope things?

[00:08:24] All I ask is that you watch this until the end. That’s it. Thank you for doing it. If you’re gonna do it, it tells the algorithm that this content is for other people so they can run with a low heart rate. Feel free to watch it at two x and if you want to go a step further, because you might be liking this, you could like hit the thumbs up, subscribe and share this episode out to someone that you know, or just comment below why zone two training is so hard for you or easy.

[00:08:47] I love to see both sides. Alright, so let’s get into what you might expect for the first two to three months of doing low heart rate training. So I’ll go week by week and I seriously wish someone had told me all this. ’cause I read Phil Mafa tone’s big book of endurance, and he didn’t say some of these things.

[00:09:01] I had to go out and search it and validate a lot of these things. But here we go. Week one, your pace drops like a full minute or two. Per kilometer. So you’re gonna slow down. It doesn’t drop any fast way you want to cheat and start making up lies that your heart rate monitors off and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:09:16] No, you need to just slow it down and you’re gonna feel silly. You also need to do the mafit tune MAF test, which, uh, I have a link to below. You can get that, or I’ll try to have a link up here and it’s how to do the mafit tone MAF test week two. You’re still slow, you’re still frustrated, but you’re getting slightly used to running slow and being humiliated and passed by.

[00:09:36] You know everyone. Week three, you get bored. You question whether this is even helping because you might even go backward and get slower. Oh yeah. You walk all the hills and you just generally hate running and you feel silly. Week four, that’s when something starts to shift. You’re running lighter a little bit.

[00:09:52] Like 3%, but you feel it. You’re holding the same heart rate, but you’re going a tiny bit faster. Nothing’s crazy, but you start thinking that your GPS or your heart rate monitor is off and you’re like, oh, it’s optimistic. It’s lying to me in a good way. Weeks five and six, the effort starts to feel smoother, less grind, more glide.

[00:10:09] In weeks seven. I call this the golden week. That’s when it turns on suddenly your aerobic system, it’s like online. It’s like a booted up operating system. Ready. But here’s what is wild biologically. Your body started adapting way earlier than those seven weeks. The research shows mitochondrial changes kick in around weeks two to four actually, and capillary growth is already happening.

[00:10:30] In those weeks, three to four, but you don’t feel it yet because those micro adaptations are building in the background, like compound interest in financing. By week seven, enough of those small changes have stacked up to where your running economy has caught up and your muscular skeletal system. All in sync.

[00:10:46] Everything’s in sync, and those small changes are stacked up and suddenly your aerobic system feels like it’s fully online. Again, operating system ready. You’re running the same pace you used to run, but now your heart rate is three five beats lower. That’s not magic. That’s months of biological remodeling.

[00:11:02] You’re either running at the same pace you used to run with a slightly lower heart rate. Three to five BPMs, or you’re running at the same heart rate at a faster pace, three to five seconds per mile, or you know, even two to three seconds per kilometer if you’re on the metric system. That’s not magic.

[00:11:18] That’s months of biological remodeling. Finally becoming obvious to you. We’re two months in, so weeks eight to 12. If you want to go that long, this is where everything usually gels. And if you’ve done it right and haven’t cheated, and haven’t lied to yourself, and you’re wearing accurate technology, it should all pay off.

[00:11:34] I highly suggest. For your first round of doing low heart rate training, you do 12 weeks if you can, of just focused 80, 90% of your runs, low heart rate, zone two, zone one, and after that, each off season, you only really need six to 10 weeks to build up your base and you can still build it as you’re doing.

[00:11:52] More interval sessions, VO two max work, temple runs and all that. You could still build up your base and maintain it, but this is putting the cart before the horse. How do you actually find your true zone two heart rate? First, find your real heart rate zones. You can use the following test, MAF formula plus the MAF test that I talked about earlier.

[00:12:08] This is Moffitt tone, Phil Moffitt tone, big book of endurance. This is his genius stuff. Or you can use lactate testing on treadmill with finger pricks. Hard to do. Expensive. Kind of logistically annoying, but it’s the gold standard. Or you can do a lactate threshold field test out in the field. Garmin, corals, they all have ’em.

[00:12:25] You can just do your own. Just Google it. Actually did an episode on all of that stuff. Check that out. Up there or below in the show notes or episode description, you can for testing, you can do a 5K time trial, so you want to go all out and. Really be gassed out. So that’s three miles. See where your average is ish, and you could plug that into a online calculator or map your zones.

[00:12:48] You could start with the VDOT calculator, uh, for pacing, and then work out from there. It’s just kind of math and using online free calculators. Or you could do the talk test. I like this one for finding your exact zone too. This will sound more complex than it is, so hang with me. This is where you’ll take in one big breath.

[00:13:04] While running or right after, you know you’re running and you stop immediately after, and you count down from 161 slowly and clearly say each number. So here we go. I would be running, running along, and I go 161, 160, 159, 158, 157, 150. And then I, you know, if I’ve been running, I’m. I would end at about a hundred fifty five, a hundred fifty four.

[00:13:29] And where you stop where you’ve like, you are out of breath, you’re like, ah, I’m done. I can’t do that anymore. And you’re still running. You want to then move some numbers. So I have 155. I would remove the middle first five. Throw that away. So I have one, and then move that five over. I have one five, and then add a zero.

[00:13:47] You could do this for 154. That becomes 140, 1 57. That becomes 170, so you get it. This is an average range, but I like to do it for zone two work. It seems to be the most accurate, super easy to do it. You could do it two or three times. I like to check it against a heart rate monitor because sometimes heart rate monitors, they’re actually off too.

[00:14:05] Even the high end ones, they can get bad data interference, et cetera. Uh, but. This is just seeing how much oxygen you can take in with a big, deep breath, and if you’re aerobically, because aerobic is oxygen, this does somewhat prove and validate the kind of one-to-one analogous, I have this much oxygen, I can speak, blah, blah, blah.

[00:14:23] That means I’m in the zone. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be as accurate as it can be and do it the most amount of times that you can cross reference it against. Other tests and you’ll get a general idea of where your zone two is, why zone two is so important. So patience is everything here with zone two to run farther or faster.

[00:14:41] You don’t just need lungs and heart, your cardiovascular system, you actually need a full body system that can handle the load. This goes back to earlier when I was saying this is actually an injury prevention method and a burnout method. By running in zone two, your tendons, ligaments, and capillaries.

[00:14:56] They don’t adapt overnight or even after a few weeks. It takes months of running easy and letting that bamboo grow. The bamboo takes years for the roots to, and then it shoots up. So the roots, they kind of make the foundation. Then it shoots up. You’re like, nothing’s happening. Nothing that shoots up. You can fake fitness with a few hard sessions, but durability that can withstand injury and burnout.

[00:15:18] That’s built slowly. Zone two protects your body while upgrading your capacity. It’s the base layer for every breakthrough you’re chasing, whether it’s a faster 5K or a marathon best time, or just the ability to run consistently without falling apart and feel better each day. Zone two is amazing. So all the HIIT workouts and VO two max stuff that comes easy, the gains come easy from that, but they also disappear as quickly.

[00:15:40] Zone two is where the real endurance lives. It actually you, you might not be able to do anything for a couple weeks in zone two, it’ll still be there that base, and if you wanna go deeper on. Patience. There’s a whole section, many chapters in my upcoming book, the 1% Better Runner, more than that soon. If you haven’t already go and get my free run farther and faster with a low heart rate training plan, you’ll get signed up automatically for my weekly five minutes or less newsletter that drops in your inbox consistently, like a 1% better runner would.

[00:16:07] The newsletter’s dope because it goes deep on things that I don’t have a chance to go deep on here on YouTube and the podcast. So I go deep on threshold training, specific workouts, what I’m listening to, watching, reading, and I have some fun in there. It ’cause running. It should be fun. Get out the QR code here, link below or in the show notes, but hold up.

[00:16:24] Low heart rate training is dool, but what about the recipe for base training? The key to actually running far and long without getting tired. Low heart rate training is part of base training. Go check that out because I did a deep dive on that here or below in show notes and you can figure all that out.

[00:16:38] Peace.