Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm seeing the staff master general after this. Procession? Yeah. Is that where he goes to Victoria? Yeah. Is that London City Athletic? Yeah. City Athletic. Is it good?
Yeah. Gonna lift some weights with the staff man.
He's such a good bloke. He is a good human being.
Can you eat too much protein? Nah. Can you remember when I sent you that? I thought because Sean used to do the equivalent of the extra mile. So I sent Ollie a message saying, is it possible to eat too much protein? I sent it to Sean as well just to see if there was a difference. And Ollie sent me this really scientific breakdown of like, yes, of course you can, but it's quite hard to do so.
And Sean just went, nah.
Have you told him that story?
No.
No.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of The Extra Mile with me, Spencer Matthews. And me, Oli Patrick. And today, we're going to be talking about zones, running zones. What are they? Why do we care about them? You know, we had Stephen Scullion on the main show. I'm going to stop calling it the main show. I think it is the main show. You know what? I love Extra Mile, right?
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Chapter 2: What are heart rate zones and why are they important?
Yeah, so running zones have historically been a way of trying to gauge which energy system I'm using to perform the task. So human beings are much like a...
an electric car which i could potentially use the prius as our early example that at relatively low combustion rates so when your prius is pulling out of the car park it's probably silent and then as it speeds down the a430 it would move from being a silent vehicle to a petrol powered vehicle because as it requires that higher speed it requires a different fuel mix and humans are the same.
So as we're running at low intensity, we can use a really efficient fuel, which is fat and oxygen to combust the energy that we are using now. So as you and I sit here now, you'd like to think, unless we've had some crazy glucose drink or some wild energy drink, we will be performing these energetic tasks of communicating and having a lovely time using fat and oxygen to generate fuel.
If we then started walking and then running faster and running faster, we get to a point where our body can't deliver that energy using that same fuel source. So it starts to subsidize the fat with a bit of carbohydrate, and it starts to lose some of the availability of oxygen.
And as our body moves from a really clean fuel without consequence, so we could sit here all day, it moves to feel like a dirtier fuel mix, which comes with consequence, most notably the byproduct of fatigue, which could be a change in the acidity of the muscles, this rise of lactic acid, which is often misappropriated as the cause of fatigue, but certainly correlates with fatigue.
And the faster and harder the body works, the more I change the fuel mix and my ability to do that for a certain period of time. And someone basically stratified these into five zones, which theoretically correlate with my body moving from using aerobic and fat metabolism to carbohydrate anaerobic metabolism. I am working with sugar and no oxygen, having started with fat and oxygen.
And the zones are sort of, you know, 50 to 60% of my maximum heart rate, which in itself is a debate, is zone one. 60 to 70% is this magical zone two. 70 to 80, zone three, often called the gray zone. 80 to 90 would be zone four, and 90 to 100 is zone five.
So they're basically built there to try and help people theoretically work out which fuel source they're using against the objective of their training. That's quite the answer.
Yeah. I was expecting you to say something like, it's the heart rate at which you run at.
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Chapter 3: What is Zone 2 training and why is it popular?
I think it's zone two that he ran it in. Zone two, sorry. He kept his heart rate at 130, I think, for the whole marathon. Just because he was pacing me. So, you know, it's kind of... It's a bit of fun for some people, isn't it?
It is, but you can't compare exertion. So, you know, one person running at a certain speed, the only way you can really think about zones is how it feels. So, you know, zone two, by its very definition, is staying below what is often called the sort of anaerobic threshold, when your body basically is going to be on borrowed time. So in zone two...
You're theoretically mostly... And when we look at these energy systems, there's never that you completely use fat and oxygen. You completely use sugar and no oxygen. So these systems are always blended.
Chapter 4: How do different heart rate zones affect energy sources?
But if you and I are using fat and oxygen to run... We can run for a long time. Me more than you because I've got more fat than you, right? I've definitely got more fat. You know, so my ability to combust energy is basically, you know, nearly not unlimited. You know, I'll dehydrate. I'll have some central elements of fatigue creeping in.
But if I can do something in zone two, I can do it for a long, long time. Now, what I can do in zone two depends on how conditioned I am. So your zone two, what you can achieve, and again, comparing you to me, you running in zone two would be significantly faster than me running in zone two. But we would probably feel the same.
And that's the thing, when people see extraordinary tasks, when people see Tour de France cyclists cycling at 40 kilometers an hour, you know, they're like, oh my God, I can't imagine that. Because when you're at 40 kilometers an hour, you're in zone five. So they don't feel like you feel for two and a half hours, three hours, five hours. They feel like you feel when you're barely trotting.
Well, we had Mo Farah in this studio who made the point that him running a flat out 5K and you or I running a flat out 5K is exactly the same in terms of exertion, right? It'll take us a few minutes more.
Yeah. It's worse.
It's harder. But yeah, exactly. We're out there for longer.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm in zone four or five. for, you know, let's say around 20 minutes, definitely north of 20 minutes at the moment. You know, so he's doing that in, you know, what was he, 13?
I can't remember his PB, but yeah.
So he's seven minutes less in the same degree of pain. And, you know, he'll have built much better tolerances to that pain. So, you know, theoretically, the average person... I want to give them their flowers. We are feeling pain at a greater level than some of these elite endurance athletes because we don't have great tolerance of it and we're enduring it for longer durations.
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Chapter 5: How does individual fitness level affect heart rate zones?
that's taking you into those upper limits. If you're high rocks or anything of an hour, you know, 20-minute burst, 30-minute burst, you need carbohydrate. And carbohydrate being avoided in the build-up to events is, it might help you look a little more, you know, chiseled on the beach, but it will be a detriment to performance for sure. But, you know, maybe.
I think it's because muscle glycogen stores water.
I don't know why you're looking at me.
Because, you know, because you've already had your top off twice since I got here.
I was showing you that there's children that burnt me. I won't name them out of respect for fellow businessmen, but bloody hell. It's happened to me a few times. I put it on. I don't know why I just don't chuck it out. I will.
Yeah, I think, again, the key learning from this morning is if something irritates you, Not necessarily a person, but if a product irritates you.
If anything irritates you, chuck it in the bin.
So your zone 2s are a great example of when someone does an awful lot of conditioning, they actually move the numbers. So your zone 2 would be predicted to be something about up to 128 beats per minute, but your zone 2 is somewhere between 136 and 146 beats per minute. So that's way higher.
Yeah, but like 128 beats per minute. I can't run at 128 beats per minute. No. Well, and again, you could if you run.
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