Brad Brown 0:00 Welcome on to the next Female
Athlete video. My name is Brad Brown from Coach Parry dot com where we help you become fitter,
faster and stronger. I'm joined once again by sports scientist and head of The Female
Athlete programme here at Coach Parry dot com, Shona Hendricks. And today we're talking about
pacing and intensity within your runs. It's the biggest mistake that Shona sees amateur athletes
making and we're going to dig into why that is and how you can fix it because there's a pretty
good chance you making the same mistake in your running. If you get any value out of this video,
we'd love it if you hit the like button to smash that button. Let us know that
you appreciate these videos. If you have any questions you're more than welcome
to pop those into the comments as well. But right now let's head straight over to Shona.
Welcome back Shona Nice to touch base. Today we're talking about the
biggest mistake that you see Peri and postmenopausal females making with their running,
let's get the cat out of the bag straightaway. What is that mistake?
Shona Hendricks 0:52 Yeah, the the biggest mistake,
Brad that we see amateur athletes making is that they run, they run their easy runs too fast. So
let's just let's just spin that around and put it in the view of of elite athletes or
Olympic athletes. They ran the easy run so easy that by the time they have to do a faster session
or quality session, an interval session, or even the next session there, they are recovered and
ready to go for that session. Part of the reason and we see it all the time with with amateur
athletes is that every single run is just too fast. And so they're not really recovered when
they have to do those faster sessions. They're exhausted and and you're not ready for the next
session. And I think the reason is that we're not like the elite athletes. We don't we don't
get paid to do this. We've got a lot of other things going on. And so we always try to prove to
ourselves how fit we're getting in every single session. And if you're not hurting, you know,
it's definitely not working. But But yeah, that's that's definitely the that's the number
one mistake that we see amateur athletes making is that the easy runs are not done easy enough.
Brad Brown 1:57 Shona, you mentioned that we so many of us
are pressed for time, and we try to get these runs in and we feel like we have to be working. It's
almost that whole no pain, no gain mantra that if you're not working hard, you're wasting your time.
But every run has its own sort of outcome that you want to get. And an easy run is exactly that
it needs to be easy. Why is running at the correct paces, particularly on the easy end, so important?
Shona Hendricks 2:23 Yeah, so exactly that it's not,
it's not just a matter of going out and hurting as much as you can, and you're going
to get a benefit. The body has different sort of energy systems and how it works. And in order to
work on those particular energy systems, you have to work in what term zones almost. And it's, it's
there's different models of those zones, depending what theory you're reading, there might be five
zones, you know, to work on, it might be three, but essentially, and we'll just use this to build
your aerobic endurance you need to be working within zone two. That is that is where the the
physiological adaptation for endurance will take place. And when I'm referring to that adaptation,
things I'm talking about is essentially, we want your body to become more efficient
at what it's doing. So the heart as itself as a muscle, the more you train in the zone,
the heart actually gets a little bit bigger and more effective at pumping the circulation and
the blood around that in that blood in the in the circulation, there's all the energy that you need,
or the fuel that you need to create energy within the cell, they're these little powerhouses called
mitochondria and the more you train within that zone, the more of those mitochondria actually are
created, they are more of them, it's not just that they get bigger, there's more. And then the body
becomes really effective at removing the waste. So once the cell has done its thing, the body
becomes quite effective at removing that waste. And so all of that takes place within a zone two.
And you know that that bandwidth of that zone is quite large. And you can train towards the
top end of that zone and be getting all of that physiological adaptation. But when you're training
at that top end of that zone, there's a lot of eccentric load on your, on your, on your bones and
on your muscles in particular, and there's a lot of stress that's on your musculoskeletal system.
Just to explain that the difference. Well what eccentric load means, the body has a number of
types of contractions, but the two most important ones are concentric and eccentric. Concentric
is where the muscles are pulling together. And you can see that that's quite a strong there's
a lot of fibres pulling together. And that's not only when you're pushing off the ground that the
muscles are coming together. The opposite of that is the eccentric load where the muscle fibres are
coming apart. And that is normally acts as a shock absorber absorber on as you think about
writing down hill, so the muscles lengthening and the fibres are coming apart. And so that
just puts a lot of strain on the body and it's in those eccentric contractions, we actually feel the
most stuff. I'm sure those of runner down comrades will complain that it's worse afterwards than the
up and that is the exact reason why. And so, long story short after all of those contractions, when
you're working at the top end of that zone, two. There's a lot of that eccentric load. However,
if you work towards the bottom end of that zone two so a little bit easier, your runs are a little
bit slower, you are getting exactly the same physiological adaptation that I spoke about,
but with less of that eccentric load. So it's costing your body less for the same adaptation.
Brad Brown 5:17 Yeah, and that's such an important point
to make. And it's the same benefit, but at a lower cost on the body essentially, one of the things
when we talk about this and just so you know, if you finding this interesting, we hosting a running
through menopause masterclass, shortly, if you'd like to register for it, we're going to be going
through this principle in a lot more detail, but also for other pillars that Shona has put
together as part of the running through menopause training framework that will help you become
a better runner to and through menopause. One of the things when we talk about this that people go,
you telling me to run slow, how am I going to get faster if you're telling me to run slow all
the time. But we're not talking about running every single run as slow as you need to run it.
Shona Hendricks 5:55 Yep, spot, I know, you know, there's
that your plan will have a mixture of easy runs, and then perhaps some higher intensity or quality
runs or interval runs, however you want to term it in the lingo that there is, but you know, we work
on a good sort of percentage of that, generally around an 80% easier and 20% more high intensity
quality runs. As we get a little bit older, though, we'll adjust that slightly and go but more
85% easier, and perhaps 15%, more quality runs. So we're not saying that every single run needs to be
easy. The reason we're saying that easy read needs to be easy that when you do that easier and easy,
you're a little bit slower, there's less load and strain on your body so that by the time
you do your next run, whether that's an easy run, or a long run or quality run,
your body is prepared and able to sustain the load of that run. And so so no, there's there's a
variety of sessions within that within the plans. But we're focusing on building aerobic engine,
but with the goal of having less cost on the body, and then being able to recover next,
so that when you do your quality faster session, you have the capacity to really work hard in that.
Brad Brown 7:02 We'll talk about how
to figure out what the right pace is for you in just a moment. But Shona you make an important
point there too, is that when you do start training and running your easy runs super easy.
You get the benefits almost immediately, like you can almost go out on today's run,
and you'll feel great. And that's the challenge because so many people they make the mistake
that they first of all, are running the easy runs too hard. So when they dial it back,
and all of a sudden they start feeling great again, they feel like oh, this is working. Let
me go and test it. And that's where the second mistake comes in here, isn't it?
Shona Hendricks 7:32 Yeah, exactly. That's going back to
the first thing we said we're constantly trying to prove to ourselves how fit we're getting. So when
you put this into your plan, it bears fruit almost instantaneously. And you start feeling Oh, well,
I'm getting I'm getting fitter. But the reason you're feeling better is because the process is
working. And so the trick to making it work for you is to to still hold back, don't fall back
into that trap of pushing harder on that easy run and keep holding back have the discipline to run
that easier and a little bit easier. Because the reason it's working well is because it's
working because you're doing the right things. And then use your use your quality runs faster runs,
that's where you can really go out and and you know, drop the hammer and really put it put,
you know, go a little bit faster. And then use your time trials, we do time trials every couple
of weeks. That's where you test yourself, and you see how well I'm getting fitter.
Don't do that in your easy runs. And then most importantly, I mean, do that on race day,
you know, we want it that's where we really want the magic to happen. So yeah, we don't necessarily
want to be doing that in our easy runs. So just the trick to making that work for you
is to just still just dial it back a little bit and make sure that you you following that plan.
Brad Brown 8:39 Absolutely Shona. Let's talk about how do
you figure out what the correct pace to be running at for these easy runs? How do you work it out?
Shona Hendricks 8:47 Right, if you have an
idea of your maximum heart rate, and I'm not talking, I mean, there are equations to work
that out, you know, the 220 minus age, there's just a lot of variants in those those equations,
I'm always a bit sceptical of using those I don't really like using those. And and in particular,
as we get older, as we, you know, 50 and above those, those equations become less reliable to
use. Yeah, from a physiological perspective. So if you've managed to do a maximum heart rate test
in a lab or something like that, that's a far more reliable measure.
Using that maximum heart rate, we want to work somewhere in and around 70 to 75% of that maximum.
And that's sort of the the zone to where we're looking to work. Alternatively,
if you haven't had that maximum heart rate test if you've gone and you've done a threshold
test of sorts, so a hard run where you can do a sustained effort for 30 to 40 minutes, get
an idea of your heart rate there, we want to be working around 80% of that threshold. So that's,
that's essentially from a theory or scientific basis. But if you don't have any of those,
Brad Brown 9:48 If I can, if I can
interrupt before you get into if you don't have one of those. Let's just touch on the heart rate.
How important is it when you talk about measuring your heart rate having a unit that measures
accurately, let's talk chest versus wrist strap as an example.
Shona Hendricks 10:02 Yeah, no, that's that's
imperative. And yeah, sorry, that's really, really good point, we need reliable readings.
Okay. And so that's why if you're getting something done in a lab, awesome, that's,
that is the the, you know, gold standard. But but for yourself, the wrist based heart rates
are awesome, they they useful, they helpful with us, but they just not reliable enough,
there's too much sort of up and down and moving around. And one of the reasons is because people
are not wearing them correctly. So firstly, you want to have it just below this wrist bone,
and you want to have it really, really tight on your wrist ok, that is to try and get that reading
as accurate as possible. But if you if you have the luxury, and you can purchase a chest strap,
that will be the gold standard over and above the wrist based heart rate. That is, yeah,
you're not going to get accurate readings all the time from your wrist. So imperative to get
yourself a chest strap, because then that's going to really make a difference there.
Brad Brown 10:54 Absolutely. So lab
first prize, second prize, chest based wrist, chest based heartrate monitor,
third prize would be wrist based. But if you don't have access to any of those,
there's a really simple way to know that you're running easy enough. What is that?
Shona Hendricks 11:08 Yeah, we we like to say you should be
able to have a robust conversation so and then when a lot of people tell me they're like, oh,
but I had a conversation with my running mates but they they probably not breathing in between their
conversation so so I would almost put it down to you having an argument or debate with your, with
your, your friend around who's a better football team or you know, like is are the Springboks going
to beat England in their world cup again, and you know, like, take the cup, you should be able to
have that kind of conversation it should be and and not be out of breath while you're running,
that's what the easy sort of pace is what we were referring to. Lately in these sorts of times we're
not necessarily running with running partners anymore and if you're running alone we we've
said this a Coach Parry, I'm sure this made a lot of neighbours quite upset but you should be able
to burst into song in your run and not feel very heavily out of breath. And I have my earphones
in so no one can hear me burst into song but I'm sure my neighbours all can but yeah, that's that
is how we would regard that as an easy run. And then as little test as well that as you finish
that run you should feel like you could have gone on for more that's enough those those would
be the factors that I would take into account if you're not using heart rates or pace as a guide.
Brad Brown 12:18 Yeah, and if you are
going to sing during one of your runs please make sure you video it and use the hashtag sing test.
We want to see those videos I was singing in my run the day before yesterday Shona,
I hope my neighbor's love shotgun Kelly because that was singing so
it's all it's all good. Shona as always great to catch up. Thanks for your time today.
Shona Hendricks 12:35 Yeah, thanks, Brad. Always good to catch up.
Brad Brown 12:37 As I mentioned earlier in the video,
make sure you register for our free upcoming running through menopause masterclass,
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