191. Run slow to run fast, the 80/20 method with Matt Fitzgerald

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[00:00:25] for podcasters, I feel like having the Marathon Running Podcast take you from the starting line to the finish line Alex Hutchinson interview excited type of excitement. Because you were jumping up and down when you were talking about it earlier. Yes, I love Matt Fitzgerald's books and I never thought he would come on my podcast. Sometimes the lesson in this is all you have to do is ask. That's a very good advice for people.

[00:03:02] Lenny, do you use the 80-20 method? if the Kenyans can do it, right? If they have their fast pace and if they run easy, then they also go to their training camps and they sleep a lot and we as normal runners, we don't do that. We run around about with our days and families and do all these important things. So we never really get that rest that they do and I'm not comparing us to them. I'm just saying it makes sense to have some really hard

[00:04:21] workouts and then give your body rest

[00:04:24] but still be able to put the mileage in. So what did you talk about with Matt? Yeah, so with him, I just talked about understanding the basics and fundamental principles of this 80-20 method. We talked about how this method has a scientific foundation, how it's been embraced by elite runners, how it's adaptable to all levels of runners, how there's different distances

[00:05:42] and training plans when it comes growing up. I've also been a writer, post in my life, or grew up wanting to write professionally. And I also got that from my dad. My dad was a published novelist from the time I could first read. So I had the advantage of growing up knowing that you could do that. Like writing could be your job. And I fell in love with writing when I was about nine years old.

[00:07:03] And I'm just one of those people who always knew what he wanted to do.

[00:08:01] I have some that I've co-authored. I have one that, or I've had a couple actually that are like journals.

[00:08:08] So it's mostly blank pages, but technically I'm the author of those.

[00:08:13] So if you count everything, it's more than 30 now.

[00:08:16] That's amazing.

[00:08:17] What an accomplishment.

[00:08:18] And from the running coaching books, which ones are the best sellers? kind of nuts and bolts training guide for runners. Yeah, amazing. How bad do you want it is one of the books I absolutely love to, but today we're gonna hop into 80, 20 and 80, 20 for the listeners don't know is the principle of running 80% of your runs at a lower pace versus 20% as a hard run.

[00:09:42] So maybe you can explain that better.

[00:09:44] The fundamental principles of 80, 20

[00:09:47] for those that are new to the concept And he noticed this startling consistency because cross-country skiers and swimmers don't really talk. And yet, runners in Japan don't necessarily talk to trial athletes in Brazil. And yet, they were all training very, very similarly. And they were doing about 80% of their training

[00:11:00] at low intensity.

[00:11:01] And if you rewind some decades, elite endurance athletes

[00:11:05] weren't training that way. is more like a 50-50 intensity balance. So, unless you kind of like as a recreational runner, unless you make a conscious effort to train the way the pros do, you probably aren't going to. Yeah, no, absolutely, because, we don't have the leisure of having the ability

[00:12:22] to rest as much as they do, right?

[00:12:23] They do their hard runs and then they lay around

[00:12:26] and they eat and then they maybe do a second run 77 to 81 percent of your maximum heart rate. And I should say your true maximum of heart rate, not that 220 minus your age formula that is wildly accurate for, I inaccurate for almost everyone. So that's like, that's where exercise scientists now place kind of the boundary between low and moderate intensity for exercise.

[00:13:44] And the reason it matters is that if you're just below that threshold,

[00:14:45] to go out and do a low intensity run, they're actually above that first ventilatory threshold, not a lot, but a little bit matters.

[00:14:47] And so they're really not getting as much benefit as they could be if they slowed down

[00:14:53] just a little bit.

[00:14:55] Okay.

[00:14:56] So 77 to 80% of the max ventilatory threshold.

[00:15:02] And for those of us who just have a garment or we have a garment that probably doesn't beats per minute, then you would need to be at or above 120 beats per minute for it to kind of count as exercise. Okay. Yeah, I like that because, I mean, even if you're just moving, you're probably going to be able to hit that pace that is enough to have some kind of benefit. And you're mentioning that there are benefits.

[00:16:21] So what are the benefits that we get when we don really gain some endurance benefits like fatigue resistance. But those that sort of second level of benefits only kicks in once you start boosting the volume. Like if you make those low intensity runs longer or you increase your frequency of running,

[00:17:43] you know, more runs per week, those types of things.

[00:17:46] Yeah, that threshold again. The analogy I like to make is to chronic mild leap deprivation. If you need eight hours of sleep a night and you get seven, you can function and you might not have any idea how much better you would feel and function unless you start getting

[00:19:01] that extra hour.

[00:19:03] With runners who were stuck in that moderate I tell runners, give it a chance.

[00:20:24] You will come up the other side of it. better at the end of a run than you did at the start. So that sort of gets the hooks in a lot of runners because it's fairly immediate and they're feeling better. In terms of the performance benefits, those take longer. I will say this. I would say the next benefit that to just use some unpublished research by some folks who make a wearable where they've been tracking intensity balance with people who got out of that modern intensity rut and became more disciplined and following in 80-20 intensity balance like you know like I

[00:23:01] think one of them like 11 to 14% improvement in performance which is Why would I want to train slow when I'm trying to race fast? And so that's the mind that for a lot of runners. And so that's one big reason, the counter-intuitiveness. But also, there's research showing that if you just tell someone to do unstructured, exercised, and to choose their own intensity,

[00:24:20] there's this automatica, right?

[00:25:42] Social media, the game of comparison, comparing ways to find it. One is pretty reliably, if you're like between 75% and 80% of your maximum heart rate, you're probably on the safe side of the VT-1.

[00:27:02] So you need to know your true maximal heart rate.

[00:27:05] The one size fits all formulas are, they don't fit all. the average velocity you sustained for that six minute test and then multiply that by 0.65. And that will give you a number that's pretty close to your VT1 for pace. If you're someone who prefers to train by pace, you can also do it by power.

[00:29:43] Whatever your preferred metric is for monitoring intensity, you can dial in your zones using that metric. Yeah, I mean your heart adapts to running more than just about any other organ of your body. And not just the heart, but the entire cardio respiratory system, it's all linked together. So if you go from being a couch potato to being a runner, your heart muscle will actually grow.

[00:29:45] Just like when your biceps grow, when you, monitoring heart rate is just a good way to track these beneficial adaptations to the running you're doing. Yeah, that's great. That's great. So, yeah, I guess get a good heart rate monitor

[00:31:02] and get going with this in order to be entirely at low intensity, maybe

[00:32:21] including a long run at low intensity. If you plan a week you're doing, right? So once you find that threshold and you go out and you run at a heart rate that is below the threshold, now you know what that feels like, right? And then going forward, you can rely on how you feel, whereas previously,

[00:33:42] before you did that calibration, you couldn't rely on how you feel like we should be doing today? I think we should go on a hike because you don't have a lot of those in Florida. And then maybe end at the beach and watch the sunset. Sounds good. All right, so stay tuned. If you want to see that you can see it on Instagram

[00:35:01] because I'm gonna commit. I'm gonna post a video about it. If you don't see a video, you forgot.