359: Easy, Tempo, Hard: The Triple Pillars of a Successful Running Plan

In episode 359 of the Real Life Runners podcast, we discuss the importance of including three types of runs in your training regimen to avoid injury, increase motivation, and achieve your running goals: easy runs (L2), tempo runs (L5), and hard intervals (L8). We explain the physiological and mental benefits of each run type, emphasizing the necessity of variation for progress and enjoyment.

Easy runs build aerobic capacity and teach your body to efficiently use oxygen and fat for fuel. Tempo runs improve your lactate threshold and mental toughness, while hard intervals enhance anaerobic capacity and muscle recruitment. We underscore the critical balance between running volume and intensity, and offer strategies for integrating these runs into a balanced training plan.

We also touch on common misconceptions and hurdles runners face in adjusting their training habits, providing encouragement to those seeking to optimize their running through this structured approach.

01:43 Breaking Down the Myths: Why Variety in Running Matters

02:41 The Mental and Physical Barriers to Diverse Training

07:52 Easy Runs Explained: Building a Strong Aerobic Base

24:40 Understanding Tempo Runs: The Key to Progress

30:15 The Science Behind Lactate Threshold and Its Benefits

32:23 Mental Toughness and Tempo Runs

37:49 Introducing High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

45:32 Anaerobic Capacity: Boosting Speed and Power

49:43 Planning Your Training: Volume, Intensity, and Recovery

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Transcript

Angie: 0:00

This is the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 359. In today's episode, we're talking about three different types of runs that you need to be incorporating into your training and why each of them is important for you to improve as a runner. So many runners just go out and run without a plan or structure and end up doing most of their runs at an effort level of about five or six out of 10. This can lead to a lack of progress, decreased motivation, fatigue, and even injury. There is an entire method structuring a training plan that we teach inside the academy, but today we want to help you understand the importance of incorporating different kinds of runs into your training and how to do it to help you avoid injury Run longer, run faster and succeed with your goals. So stay tuned. All right. Welcome to the show today. We are super excited to be here with all of you as always. Thanks for joining us. And thanks for being here today.

Kevin: 1:16

Excellent. What level effort are we bringing on today's podcast?

Angie: 1:18

What level effort? Well, if we were going by my effort level yesterday, it would probably be quite low. I am, uh, trying to bring some energy. I have not been feeling very energetic today, to be honest with you, but I am going to Try to bring a little bit more energy for the recording of the show today.

Kevin: 1:35

Excellent. Well, I mean, even if we're bringing a higher energy level, as we'll discuss later, maybe we should only bring higher energy in small spurts.

Angie: 1:41

There you go. There we go. All right. So today we're talking about the importance of incorporating different types of runs into your training and what kinds of runs do you want to do? You need to incorporate depending on the goal that you're going for. Um, so as you heard in the intro, we don't want you to make the mistake that so many runners make, which is going out and running all of your runs at a moderate effort level, because that leads to a lot of problems. It leads to injury, burnout, plateau, lack of progress, lots of different issues, and it just also doesn't feel great all the time to go out and run that way. You know? So what we want to talk to you about today is going to help Not only give you better results, but also improve your enjoyment of your running so much better, but you have to stay open minded to this because I know that so many times we talked to runners about this concept about making most of your runs easy, making some of your runs a little harder, and that's the underlying concept that we're gonna be talking about today. We're gonna break it down into three specific types of runs. That you need to incorporate, but also when we talk about this concept, before we kind of jump into the details, I want to talk a little bit about what is holding you back from trying this out? Because I think that so many people have heard this concept before and they know they should be doing that. I've heard, had so many people on like social media say like, yeah, I know I should be doing this, but why do I have such a hard time actually doing it? Why can't I? Put this into my training any thoughts on that

Kevin: 3:10

sure. I mean I got a thought on on the easy part the easy running is is boring yeah, and Sometimes uncomfortable because it's easier than you're used to running and sometimes that can literally it Strains the muscles in ways that you're not used to it feels feels like it's not your natural running form. You're trying to figure out how do I get into a rhythm, but it's not your normal rhythm. You're trying to take like extra short steps or like your, your posture is off. It just, it's got an odd feeling to it. Sometimes when we slow ourselves down, that covers that end of the spectrum

Angie: 3:44

when you're first getting used to it, I think, right? Like when you, once you get used to it, then it feels way better.

Kevin: 3:49

It's amazing. Yeah.

Angie: 3:50

Yeah. But there's also the mental part of it. Like you definitely did a good job covering some of the physical awkwardness that comes with this. The big part, I think, is the mental side of, you know, why do people have such a hard time incorporating this principle or this idea? And it's because you have some other belief or set of beliefs that pushing harder is going to make you faster, that slowing down and taking your foot off the gas is going to lead in a decline in your performance. And it's a really big thought shift that we're asking you to make here. I totally understand that. And please don't think that I take that lightly because I had the same issue. Like when Kevin, when we first started, like, Learning about the science behind this. And, um, Kevin was telling me, Angie, you need to slow down on your runs. I said to him, but I'm already a slow runner. Why? I don't, I don't want to slow down more. I want to get faster. Right. And that my thinking at that time. Before really understanding the science and everything behind this was that I needed to push harder in order to get faster because that's what I was taught throughout all of my team sports growing up, right? Like all of my team sports growing up, it was no pain, no gain, always give 110%. If it doesn't

Kevin: 5:02

hurt, it doesn't count. It was one of my favorites.

Angie: 5:05

Yeah, right? Like this is the message that we're Given as kids or as athletes in other sports, and that just does not apply to endurance running that just does not work for what we're now putting our bodies through, especially for those of us that are over the age of 40. We cannot go out and push ourselves hard, even when I say hard. I mean, anything more than easy, right? Like anything moderate is considered hard. Like it's not. We're going to get into the details, but you know what, you know, if you're going out and running faster or pushing to that moderate or harder effort level on a daily basis, that's doing too much. And that's the reason that running doesn't feel good. It's why you can't be consistent. It's why you're not seeing progress. It's why you're getting hurt. It's the reason for so many issues that.

Kevin: 5:53

I mean, one of the big things that I like to go to this, you sometimes avoid this one, but I think that one of the, the ways that we could talk about of being able to get faster is by just running more. And some people are like, well, I can't run more. I'm super tired from my run already. Then slow it down so that you can actually run more. It's the consistency of how many days per week are you doing it? But also how many miles or kilometers, depending on what country you're in, how far are you going on a daily basis? Because it's hard to keep increasing that number. If you insist that it always has to stay at the same pace. And sometimes it takes signing up for stupidly long races to fully convince yourself. Like I, I believe in this. I love teaching this principle. I taught you this principle that you have to slow it down so that you can push on the hard days and still to really fully accept and slow down my long runs. Because sometimes going out on a long run, you're just like, can I be done soon? And I can be done sooner if I picked up the pace, but then you're not getting the point of it. So to really slow it down, Imagine that you had to go for a race that was six to ten hours and now find a pace. Now you might be thinking about what your easy pace actually is.

Angie: 7:04

Yeah, so We understand that there are both physical and mental things that can be blocking you from adopting some of these principles. And if that sounds like you and you want help working through those things, please reach out and send me a DM on Instagram or join the Academy. This is something that we help our runners work through all the time because like I said, There's so many times where we understand a principle logically, we can, we can understand it, we can accept it, we can say, yes, this makes sense, and we have a really hard time actually putting that into practice, and that's what we love to help runners to do is to actually help them break down both the physical barriers and the mental barriers that are getting in the way from making that transition. Long term sustainable progress that you want to see in your running. So let's get into the three types of runs that every runner needs to incorporate in their training. Now, depending on who you are, what race you're training for your experience level and lots of other life factors. These can be done in different ratios, but these are the three types of runs that all of us need to be incorporating in our weekly training plan. Well. Month weekly bi weekly training plan like every couple of weeks weekly depending on well, it depends on again what you're doing

Kevin: 8:23

Weekly,

Angie: 8:24

alright week your weekly run we can

Kevin: 8:26

debate on it.

Angie: 8:26

Alright, let's talk about it. Alright, so number one is easy runs We're not going to spend too much time here because we've got plenty of podcasts about easy running. But when you're talking about an easy run, what is an easy run? It is on a scale of one to 10 with one being super duper easy. I could do this for hours and hours and hours at this pace and 10 being max effort. I could last about a minute at this pace. We're talking that most of your runs should be performed at a level two to three out of 10. And the mistake that so many people make is pushing at that five to six out of 10. On most of their runs, which is leading to the lack of progress, the injury, fatigue, overtraining, all sorts of issues, right? And so most runners are running too hard all the time, and they don't even understand what easy running actually feels like. A lot of runners think that they're running easy, but when I ask them what that feels like, they're like, 5 out of 10! I'm like, that's not easy, then you need to slow down even more.

Kevin: 9:22

Yeah. Because easy running, if you're going to err on easy, it needs to slide the other direction. A lot of people take off and for the first few minutes, it's a two out of 10, but by the end of their run, whatever the length of their run, it's now slid its way up to five, six. And you're like, what you're no longer easy. An easy run is literally easy through the whole thing. And that might mean that you're getting slower as the run goes. That might mean that

Angie: 9:47

this is where people have a real hard time because they, they, Decide early in the run that this is my easy pace because this feels like a level two out of ten This is really really good to talk about.

Kevin: 9:58

Yes If I start running at a 10 minute mile and that's easy then 10 minute mile is my easy pace So by an hour into my run, I sure as heck better still be hitting 10 minute mile pace Not if suddenly that 10 minute mile pace has slid up to a level four If you are no longer feeling comfortable, if you are breathing much harder, it doesn't matter what the pace is. It's not an easy run anymore because The easy run is based off of how it feels, not how fast you are going.

Angie: 10:30

That is so, so important. Okay. So what does an easy run feel like? The easy run should feel easy. Your breathing should be relaxed and not labored at all. You can maintain a converse speed. Station and speak in complete sentences. We'd like to call that the talk test. Okay. So the way that we like to teach easy running There are people out there that will give you a specific pace or a pace range and say your easy runs Should be two to three minutes slower than your 5k time or slower than your 10k time There's lots of different pace ranges and things out there. We do not like giving paces out especially on easy runs We would much rather you Understand how to actually connect and listen To your body and listen to the signals that your body is sending you because there are so many factors that can be at play with how a run feels on any given day. There's weather, there's hydration, there's your fueling, you know, like I know that I've had runs that Feel harder than they quote unquote should right at that pace like if my normal easy pace is say like a 1030 and I go out one day and I'm running a 1030 and like this is feeling way harder than it should and then I think about it. I'm like, well, I didn't really eat enough yesterday, right? Like I had a really busy day I had smaller meals than I normally did or you know There are some days that time gets away from me and I'm doing coaching calls and I have got the girls and I'm doing I know there's times I've eaten lunch at like three o'clock in the afternoon, which I know is not good. I know if I was my own coach, I would tell myself, you know, how to, how to fix that, but it's real life and it does happen. Right? So sometimes even though we know better, we don't always do better. Kind of like what we were talking about at the beginning of the episode. But we want to check in with how does this actually feel in my body? So breathing is a great way to do this and the talk test is also a great way to do this It's kind of check in and see how does this feel in my body right now?

Kevin: 12:23

Yeah, like an actual honest talk test not one where you're lying to yourself and you're saying no I I definitely feel like I could carry on a complete Conversation right now because a lot of people run solo. So it's difficult to carry on a conversation or you've gotten so used to running in a group with other people and you do chat back and forth. And sometimes you're like, I don't know, I've tied multiple sentences together when I talked to that person. Okay. Gets great. But then did you need 30 seconds to recover from it? Because that's not the talk test like this. How we're talking right now is the way that you should be able to talk on an easy run. You should be able to go back and forth. There should be no hesitation. You shouldn't have to like prep yourself, take a breath so that you can get into like, all right, now I'm going to have to talk for like 30 seconds here. You should just be able to go. And you know, when you finish the run, you shouldn't have to like take a big sigh. Like who managed to finish that one? Like you should just be okay. Now, now I've finished my run. It should still feel comfortable.

Angie: 13:19

Right. And the benefits of being. Doing most of your runs easier. The benefits of just easy runs in general is that these help you to build aerobic capacity now There are two systems in the body two different types of energy systems There's the aerobic system and the anaerobic system and the aerobic system requires oxygen that's part of what is necessary to have the aerobic system working and so When we slow down, when our runs feel easier, we are making sure that we are getting in the proper amount of oxygen to allow our aerobic system to work and to convert energy. Basically, these are energy conversion systems in the body. And during anaerobic, which is, you know, when your breathing is harder, when your heart rate is higher, when things feel harder, you're using a different energy system because that, that is not dependent on oxygen. Because when your breathing is harder, you're not getting as much oxygen. oxygen in your respiration rate, which is your breathing rate, the number of breaths you take per minute that increases, which means that the amount of time that the air spends in your lung is less, which means your body can't extract as much oxygen out of your lungs. Each breath as when you're going slower and easier when you're breathing is nice and easy and nice and slow. Then the air comes in your body gets to work and like pulls all the oxygen out of the air and then you exhale the carbon dioxide and it works very well that way. But it's a

Kevin: 14:45

great little biology class there. I

Angie: 14:48

mean, this is, that's pretty good considering I haven't taken biology in a very long time.

Kevin: 14:52

I'm just excited for the next bullet point. Cause it's one of my favorite words.

Angie: 14:56

I'll let you do that one then, but that's basically what happens. Okay. So when you're running slower, when you're breathing is more relaxed and easier, you're working on improving the aerobic system, which is going to help you to run longer, basically. It's going to help improve your endurance.

Kevin: 15:12

All right. One of the other benefits is it increases the number of mitochondria inside of your cells. And these are the little guys, as we all learned in junior high and probably again in high school, they are the powerhouses of the cell. So whatever fuel comes in, the mitochondria turns that into usable energy that you're actually using in your body to propel yourself forward. forward. So if you have more little engines inside of your cells, you can actually utilize the oxygen coming in. So it increases your aerobic capacity because you can take in the appropriate amount of oxygen and then you can utilize that oxygen because you have enough engines to go to. If you only have like a handful of mitochondria floating down, and you don't, you have thousands and millions. Um, but if you

Angie: 15:55

probably trillions, right,

Kevin: 15:56

right. So When it says it increases, like you're getting millions more of these guys. But if you have like a limited capacity of them, it doesn't matter how much oxygen you can get in. There's only so much fuel you can burn because you only have so many little generators that are able to run. So you're actually creating more little energy converting generators.

Angie: 16:16

Right, so your cells basically become more efficient when you're doing slower L2 types of runs. The other thing that you do is your body builds new capillary networks which improves your blood flow to the muscles. So basically, the Blood flow in your body. There are bigger blood vessels that are called arteries and then those arteries then break like kind of Continue branching down into smaller and smaller blood vessels So if you think of it kind of like the branches of the tree the tree trunk is like the very big artery, and then it breaks off into like maybe three or four big branches. And then from there, maybe there's ten, you know, medium sized branches. And then from there, there's 20 or 30 little branches, right? And that's kind of how the blood vessels are in our body. And so the actual blood vessels that go into our muscles, those are called the capillaries. And when we do L2 training, We are actually helping our body to build more of those capillary networks, which means that we are able to then get more blood to our working muscles. So if we got more blood to the muscles, the blood is carrying oxygen and energy. So now all of a sudden our muscles are getting more fuel during exercise. So that's going to make all of our runs more. Efficient and more like our muscles more effective during that run And it also builds more capillary networks like in all different places right in our lungs and our heart like a lot in the muscles Like all these things the blood flow is is improving all throughout our body

Kevin: 17:46

I don't know if you know the answer this one kind of putting you on the spot for this one in just general aerobic exercise nice easy running it increases Capillary networks. I've always assumed that most of the increases like in the muscles of the leg because that's where you're like Needing more because you're activating those things. Yeah, is it also like increasing capillary networks literally like in your brain? Yeah Like, absolutely. So this is, this is super beneficial. And this is

Angie: 18:11

one of the reasons that endurance, like that aerobic exercise is good for your brain. Like, right. And they've done studies that have proven that aerobic exercise actually decreases your risk of dementia, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, like all sorts of brain based diseases.

Kevin: 18:27

And as you are able to get more blood flow up to the brain, it can then. Essentially work better. And one of the big things that holds you back, like your biggest energy user as you're out running is obviously like your legs are working really hard. Your brain is working incredibly hard. It's deciding every single second whether you should hold the pace, speed up or slow down. And so the fact that your brain is using all this energy is going to If you're increasing the ability to fuel your brain, that's super helpful. Also.

Angie: 18:54

Yeah, and then the other the final piece here Is the way that our body uses fuel? Okay, and all of these things are related. It's not like they're separate They're obviously all related But the other thing that happens during easy running is that our body learns how to burn fat okay, because Fat needs oxygen in order to be oxidized, hence the word oxidation, fat oxidation, like for us, because our body stores fat like stores energy as fat in order to break down fat and use fat as fuel. We need oxygen there. Um, so we need to be going slow enough and easy enough that our body has the oxygen necessary to then break down the fat and fat is great for energy because we get more energy from fat than any other than carbohydrates or from protein. So fat oxidation is actually a fantastic way for us to get energy, but we can only do that when we are going easy enough. If we are pushing at a moderate or a hard level, our body is not burning fat because it's It's too slow of a process to, um, be fueling our body during that time. So essentially what we're doing is our body's learning how to use different fuel sources because our body's preferred fuel source and energy source during exercise are carbohydrates because carbohydrates get broken down into glucose. Glucose is the simplest, uh, fuel. Part piece of, uh, molecule that our body can use for energy. So that's our body's favorite. Like it's, it's the least, the path of least resistance, right? It's a good way, right? Like it's the glucose is the easiest fuel source that, um, our body doesn't have to work that hard to metabolize. But the problem is we can't store a lot of glucose on our body. We have a limited amount of glucose that we can store in our body as glycogen. That's one of the reasons why fueling during our runs is really important as well, because we're trying to help replenish that glucose. But during our easy runs, our body can use fat. And so that's why when you go slower, that's also why you can run a lot further because you're using different energy sources.

Kevin: 20:55

If we're just Sitting around doing nothing. We're not expending a huge amount of energy Our body's preferred energy source is fat at that point, right? Because we're not like needing a whole lot of energy Does it shift over like I know at like real low effort levels our bodies able to burn fat if we're doing nothing We still have to burn calories so that our life can exist, right? Do we burn like a combo? I mean, it's always a combo well

Angie: 21:19

Well, you know, our daily activities are usually fueled by the food that we take in during that day.

Kevin: 21:26

Ah, so it doesn't even have time to convert itself to fat.

Angie: 21:28

Right, so that's one of the reasons that people fast, because if you're not

Kevin: 21:33

taking in enough calories then your body goes to, then it's easiest pathway when it doesn't need super quick energy is fat.

Angie: 21:41

Right, because your body's always going to burn through glucose first, and glycogen first. Before it goes to fat.

Kevin: 21:47

But if you're not carrying that much glycogen inside of the bloodstream, then it's got to decide, do I break down stuff in the liver or do I go to? Well,

Angie: 21:54

you don't, you don't carry glycogen in the bloodstream. Glycogen is the storage for muscles

Kevin: 21:58

and liver

Angie: 21:58

of glucose. Yes. You store glycogen in the muscles in the liver. I

Kevin: 22:01

swear I used to be a biology teacher. But

Angie: 22:03

this is one, this is why people fast because during fasting, your body uses up all of those sources first, because those are the easy ones and then starts to. Metabolize fat. That's one of the reasons that people fast to help burn fat, but When we exercise, we're basically burning through the glucose and the glycogen as well. Now the issue is if you're pushing too hard, your body doesn't have, like, is still, is not able to tap into the fat as well. Um, it still does a little bit, but not as much. Not effectively at all.

Kevin: 22:36

There's always a blend. It's

Angie: 22:37

always a blend. Yes.

Kevin: 22:38

Even at L2, you're still, you're burning carbs. You're just burning, you're able to actually utilize some fat burning.

Angie: 22:44

Correct. It's not a hundred percent fat,

Kevin: 22:46

but the more that you do it, the more effective you'll be able to burn fat. Essentially, the more quickly you'll be able to burn through some of the fat so that you can actually efficiently use this so that you're, you know, Your, your balance of fat to carb burning at L2 gets even more fat based.

Angie: 23:03

It gets, that's a decent way to think about it. Um, so yeah, that, that's kind of the, the point. And I love how I said, Oh, we're going to run through L2 quickly. And here we are, you know, 23 minutes into the episode already.

Kevin: 23:14

You can't run through L2 quickly. It's L2.

Angie: 23:16

Yeah. We have to be slow. All right, so a way that you can think about this, um, we like to, you know, kind of think about metaphors and different ways for you to visualize this. The way that we want you to think about L2 is a crowded highway, okay? So if you live in a, uh, an urban area and you know that sometimes those highways get crowded, you probably also notice that Those highways are for some reason always under construction, like when does the construction ever end? I don't really know because it's just then starts back up again.

Kevin: 23:45

It has never not been under construction since I moved to Florida.

Angie: 23:48

So when, that's because we have so many people moving down here, especially since 2020, like the population on here has gotten crazy. So, When you have a crowded highway, we need to then expand that highway to make room for traffic to flow more smoothly. In order to do that, we need to close lanes down and put things under construction, which actually temporarily slows things down even more for massive future improvements, right? That's kind of the goal. If we're going from a three lane highway to a five lane highway, we're going, it's going to require some construction. But once we get to that five lane highway, everything should move more smoothly and more quickly in theory.

Kevin: 24:32

Slow things down in order to move your body into an efficient, aerobic, fuel burning machine.

Angie: 24:38

There we go.

Kevin: 24:39

I like it.

Angie: 24:39

Alright. Let's move on to the second type of run.

Kevin: 24:42

Woohoo! Tempo runs! Oh, I love level five.

Angie: 24:45

That's why I let you introduce it.

Kevin: 24:46

It's the best. But here's the thing. So many people default to this, and therefore they don't enjoy it the way that I think that it can be so enjoyable. If you go out and do every as an L5 run, which is the ballpark of tempo runs. Tempo runs have kind of gotten a very broad explanation across the board, but in general L5 medium level runs when used appropriate and an appropriate mounts can be really, really fun, but it's actually part of the more difficult part of training. So in a whole 80 20 principle where 80 percent of your running should be nice and easy. What we just finished talking about, the L5 Falls into that 20 percent of the more difficult training aspect. Okay. So what goes wrong with this? The pain is if you start doing too much, you're just tired all the time. You're really quickly over trained and because it's difficult, your motivation is going down while your chance of injury is going up. And that is a bad combination.

Angie: 25:45

Yeah, exactly. Because this is one of the reasons why people say they hate running. I think, you know, because they want, well, not they want, they think that all their runs should feel. at this level. They think all their run should be about a five or six out of 10. And so it's hard to maintain motivation when you feel like you have to go out and push at that moderately hard level every single day. I

Kevin: 26:06

think this is why you hated running when you started. Like I really for sure. And that's why I introduced the next level, which we'll get to, but I made things go harder so that you had to then go easier. Cause sometimes that's the answer is. Push harder days extra hard so that you're so tired that there's no way you could do L5 It has to be L2.

Angie: 26:25

Right, and if you're someone that just kind of skips tempo runs Like I also was inclined to do because these are not my favorite if you can't tell Um, you know That can also lead to lack of progress and decreased physical and mental strength because temple runs are really good for you physically, but they're also really, really good for you mentally, especially if you're training for any sort of longer distance races where you're going to have to be out there for a while, sustaining that. Comfortably uncomfortable pace.

Kevin: 26:54

I think you fell into the trap that so many people do when they flip over and they, they realize the benefits of easy running is now suddenly they ignore all tempo runs because tempo runs remind them of when running was uncomfortable. But the thing is that some of your training is going to be uncomfortable. That's how you make progress. So you can't just totally ignore these guys, right?

Angie: 27:13

So what does a tempo run feel like? So on a scale of one to 10, We're looking at a five, like five ish, five, five to six out of 10, depending on, you know, who you are, your goal, blah, blah, blah. So what does a five out of 10 feel like? This requires focus to maintain. Okay, so you can't just like go out and talk about whatever you're thinking about, like, you know, just chatting along with whoever you're running with or yourself. Um, this requires focus for you to maintain this effort level. So when we talk about the breathing test. Your breathing should feel slightly more labored, but still under control. You shouldn't feel like you're gasping for air. You should just feel like, okay, my breathing is, is harder. Um, I might notice that I need to take less steps per breath. I know that's one of the ways that I first helped my running a lot was by helping to rhythm, like, um, Rhythmatize is not really the word, but yes, I'm trying to keep a certain rhythm with my breathing, so that's a

Kevin: 28:12

word. Rhythmatize,

Angie: 28:13

Rhythmatize. Let's do it. So your breathing is, is definitely harder, um, but it's, you're definitely still under control here. When we talk about the talk test, we're talking short phrases here. So not complete sentences, definitely not multiple sentences. We're talking about short phrases, so you can still talk during this. It's just not, you just don't really want to talk that much, um, and you're just talking in, in short phrases.

Kevin: 28:36

Because you're breathing changes during this thing, because if you're not talking, you can tell the difference between an easy pace where you're basically breathing like normal and a tempo pace, you have to take bigger breaths, like you're trying to get more oxygen to the body. You're not necessarily talking. Increasing this rapid breathing all of a sudden, but you're definitely just taking deeper breaths trying to pull more oxygen in. When you start going even faster, then you start taking these more rapid breaths. But at this point you're just, you're taking bigger breaths. And so if you're trying to talk also, it's just bits and pieces. You're, you're doing small sentences.

Angie: 29:13

Exactly. So what are some of the benefits of tempo runs? Number one, they help you get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And like we said before, a lot of runners just naturally default to this level five out of 10 anyway. So that's why most runners think that running should be uncomfortable to be effective because they are going out at this tempo pace. So if you're someone that is kind of new to this whole idea of 80, 20 running of easy pace running. Um, you might understand L5 pretty well. It's just kind of like what used to be normal for you. But that's kind of the point of, of putting these into your training now is to help you get comfortable with the uncomfortable. So depending on who you are, I like to say that. These are comfortably uncomfortable, and some people like to say that they're uncomfortably comfortable. Depends on how you hear it. Yeah,

Kevin: 30:06

it's that combination where you're like, This isn't the most painful thing, but I still don't want to be doing it. I would rather be going easier than this. Um, one of the other things that it improves is it improves your lactate threshold level. Now, without getting too sciencey on this, the real, the breakdown on L2, L5, L8 is because a lot of the science literature breaks running into zone one, two, and three. And so we break it into 10, but these guys fit into those three zones. And five is where you're starting to sort of have the ability to create lactate, which is this byproduct of, of working hard. is, is being burned off. It's the lactate shuttling method so that it's not increasing a huge amount in your body because you're also using the lactate basically at the same pace that you're, you're, um, creating lactate. So you're working hard and building this by product and then you're also utilizing it in other processes.

Angie: 31:05

So then how does it improve your threshold?

Kevin: 31:06

Uh, it increases the ability to to use the lactate in the body. So instead of, as soon as you start making this byproduct, because lactate doesn't feel great inside, and then it turns into other stuff that also doesn't feel great, our muscles start getting more acidic because it creates another byproduct. Instead of immediately having this buildup of all this junk in the body, Our body has the ability to convert it back into something that can be, can be used as fuel. And so we increase the lactate level by increasing the amount of enzymes and how efficiently and effectively those enzymes work to turn it back into usable fuel.

Angie: 31:43

Right. And so. This is something that again, we don't want to be doing on every run because people often say, Oh, well, that sounds really good. Like I want to improve my lactate threshold and then they want everyone to be a lactate run or a threshold run. And that's just going to again, that's going to lead to a lot of fatigue over training. Injury, all sorts of issues.

Kevin: 32:03

And the shuttling function literally gets tired. You can't train it day after day after day. It doesn't work that well.

Angie: 32:10

Your body needs time to recover basically in between these harder efforts in between, um, these adaptations that you're asking your body to make, it needs recovery in order to, for all this, all these things actually stick in the body. Um, the other benefit of, uh, Tempo runs of L5 runs is that it really helps to improve your mental focus and helps you to practice keep it like Continuing to run and to keep going when you don't want to I think that a lot of times we get into a race And our brain and our body are yelling at us to stop, right? This is kind of what racing is. We are getting our bodies to that point where we want to slow down. We want to stop our brain, our body, everything is kind of screaming at us and we have to figure out how to keep going and tempo runs help us to figure that out, help they give us practice because. Just like if you want to become a better free throw shooter in basketball, you need to go out and shoot free throws. You also need to practice being uncomfortable and figuring out both the mental skills and the physical skills for you to keep pushing harder, even when your body doesn't want to do that. Again, you can't do this every day, unlike free throw shooting, right? Free throw shooting. You can definitely go out and practice every day, and that's very much recommended if you are trying to become a better basketball player. But. In endurance running, it's not something that you can practice every day,

Kevin: 33:35

but this is where like cross training could come in. If you're really more injury predisposed, you could do cross training at essentially this moderate effort. You could do it on a bike, you could do it on an elliptical, you can do it like. Walking really hard or really easy jogging on a steep treadmill is L5 training for Hard walking on a steep uphill is L5 for most people And that counts as L5 training with less impact on the body Like there are some athletes out there very high level athletes that do a huge amount of L5 training through cross training to increase the amount of L5 without just completely destroying their body. I personally enjoy running at L5 and so I try and do some of this, but not overdue.

Angie: 34:22

Yeah, and I think that it is important for us to do at least some of the L5 training with running because if Um, you know, trying to practice running, like you have to practice what you're going to actually use in competition.

Kevin: 34:35

A hundred percent.

Angie: 34:35

Right. Um, okay. So the way that I like to think about this is taking the SAT because the SAT requires extended periods of focus that were, that are very necessary. Like that's four hours. It's like a four hour test now, right? No, it's

Kevin: 34:50

like two.

Angie: 34:51

Is it really?

Kevin: 34:52

They've shrunk it down. Now it's going to be on the computer. It's going to be like 20 minutes.

Angie: 34:55

Are you? No, it's not. It's just going to be

Kevin: 34:56

like a retina scan. Well,

Angie: 34:58

I remember it being like a half a day test, right? No, it's two and a

Kevin: 35:01

half hours and a half hour is spent bubbling in your name.

Angie: 35:04

Well, whatever. So I remember it being a long time, but anyway. The point here is that you need extended periods of focus. You do get like short breaks. So that would be kind of like a tip, a broken tempo workout. But how do you feel after that? Like when you go and take like a long test or you're doing something mentally strenuous for a little, for a while, for a couple of hours, how do you feel? You know, would you want to take the SAT every single day? I know I sure would not. I don't know you, you like, you like standardized tests. Kevin is giving me a look here. Like Angie, did you really want to ask me that question? Okay. Most normal people would not want to take the SAT every single day.

Kevin: 35:45

I take that as a compliment.

Angie: 35:46

Okay. But that's what you're doing with your running, right? If you're going out and you're running at an L five every day, you're fatiguing your body, both physically and mentally. And that's not something that you're going to want to do every day.

Kevin: 35:57

Right. And, but you could do it over a short period of time. I've got, I like, I currently teach. high school. So I've got kids in preparation for the SAT. They're in this, you know, big accelerated SAT prep program in the week leading up to the test. They do like four full practice SATs. Now that seems insane, but By the day of the test, this is just mentally exhausting. By the day of the test, they're so used to these questions that there's no new weird stress to them. They're just so comfortable with it because this is mentally straining without putting like the physical pounding on your legs. And don't get me wrong, these kids are kind of mentally shot during that week where they're taking the SAT every single day, but the body can mentally recover a little bit better than the physical pounding of running.

Angie: 36:42

Well, and it's the same if you did it for one week, your body would be okay too.

Kevin: 36:47

And if you did this running wise for one week and then really made sure you fueled throughout that and then took a full nice recovery week of a lot of easy running, maybe some strides into it, you could probably gain some good benefits off of it. Yeah,

Angie: 37:00

I mean, That's kind of what it is, right? Is it's learning how to stress the body in a way that's going to help you improve physically and mentally, and then allowing appropriate levels of recovery. It's, it's not sustainable. Is that, that's really what it comes down to is L2 running, very sustainable, L5 running every day, not sustainable. And that's why if you wanted to put it into like a really big chunk, like we were talking about doing a running camp before, right, where we've got a lot of things in a very short period of time, um, But then it needs to be followed by an appropriate amount of recovery because your body can only do so much. So, that's kind of wrapping up a good discussion on L5 tempo runs. Anything else you want to add?

Kevin: 37:41

They're the best. They're so much fun.

Angie: 37:43

I would disagree. And that will move us nicely on to run number three. The type of, the third type of run that you need to incorporate in your training. Again, no matter what distance you're training for, no matter what your level of experience are, you You should be doing some of your training at level eight, which is hard intervals. Okay. So this is going to be a level eight out of 10 and a lot of runners never tap into this higher intensity work. A lot of runners do the majority of their running at that level five, six, and you know, some don't get, some don't go easy and most don't go up into this higher level because. They're not really sure what to do. They're not, they're thinking, Oh, well, I just need to practice distance running and sprinting doesn't really apply here.

Kevin: 38:31

Yeah, no sprinting applies. And you can see this sometimes a lot of people that do five K's will put in some hard intervals, but once people go beyond five K, they're training for a half marathon, a full marathon. They're like, the race is so long. Why would I do any of this real fast stuff? And the thing is that you don't need much of it to get a lot of benefit from it. And skipping any of your effort levels is going to be missing out on an important part of your overall training system. Like you can't skip anything. And because you don't need a huge amount of this, it's not that, it's not that difficult to put in.

Angie: 39:07

Right. And the other thing I want to put in here too, is that as we get older, this is even more important. And it's like a weird paradox because as we get older, people tend to stay away from this even more, right? Like as we get older, we're like, Oh, we can't be doing sprinting. I need to be just doing like longer, slower distance types of runs. Um, but our bodies actually benefit way more from these higher intensity bouts of running or of training. Like higher intensity interval training is really, really beneficial for us as we get older. It helps us to retain lean muscle mass and. helps us with hormones. There's a whole host of benefits that hard running gives to us. So how do we do it? short bouts of running, short bouts of hard running level eight out of 10, followed by a longer recovery period.

Kevin: 39:59

All right. So eight out of 10, we've talked about two nice and easy to talk test on that. We talked about five that you can put out some phrases, your breathing changes, your breathing changes again here at L eight, because you don't want to be talking at this one. Like that's how you know that you're into hard is you don't really want to be talking At all during this thing. So, but it's still not 10. Like we, I think we should talk about that during this also. Yeah, it's definitely, it's

Angie: 40:26

not an all out sprint, right? There is definitely a difference between level eight and level 10. I think that you should definitely be the one to talk about that. So you talked about the talk test. You don't really want to talk at a level eight out of 10 and your breathing is going to feel hard. Okay. You are going to feel like you, it is. Work to get the appropriate amount of air in at a level eight Like it is it is labored at this point,

Kevin: 40:48

but you're trying to take deep breaths, but you're also breathing fast So it's like difficult to take deep breaths. That's hard,

Angie: 40:54

which actually makes it even more important more important for you Take deeper breaths.

Kevin: 40:57

Yeah, cuz otherwise you're you're 30 seconds in you're cramping up. You got side stitches. It's a whole friggin You don't want to

Angie: 41:02

hyperventilate so it's it's this weird thing of where you want to take deeper breaths But also shorter breaths, which don't always work well together and requires requires practice, which is why you need to practice these. That's one of the reasons that L8 is so good because again, it helps more with breathing and your body's ability to pull that oxygen out of the air really quickly.

Kevin: 41:22

All right. So you talk about short bouts of hard running followed by recovery. Now this is where you get some pushback is when people run, they like to run and during the recovery on an ongoing basis. L eight effort. The recovery is very often walking. You can do it with running recovery, but very often to most of our athletes, I prescribe the recovery period to be a walk portion. You know, we'll talk about exactly how you can structure this thing in. But if you're going to run the recovery, your recovery window is even longer. Like that's thing.

Angie: 41:56

It's like putting burpees in in between heavy lifting sets. No bueno.

Kevin: 42:00

You're gonna have to explain that. Don't do it. I don't do burpees ever.

Angie: 42:03

Well, the point is people think that the rest is not productive, but the rest is the productive part,

Kevin: 42:09

right? Like

Angie: 42:09

you you need to stress the body do hard like a hard lifting set Or a hard interval where you're running fast or running hard up a hill. That's the other way to do this. Um, especially if you are someone that's injury prone is like running up a hill is less stress on your body, but actually, but it still gives you that hard L eight type of effort.

Kevin: 42:30

Yes. I think I might try that tomorrow.

Angie: 42:32

Help.

Kevin: 42:33

Yes.

Angie: 42:34

Yeah. I haven't done hills in a while. I should do those as well, but I mean,

Kevin: 42:37

they're so easy to find down here in Florida, I

Angie: 42:38

know, but the point is you need to take longer recovery. For these, but then people think, well, I'm not being productive. I've got to do something during that recovery period.

Kevin: 42:47

Yeah, my watch, and I don't trust most of this stuff that it gives me, but it tells me that there's an afterburn effect of going fast. And this is actually valid. When you go really fast, You're still burning calories above rest, even if you just stood there. And I don't suggest standing there. I suggest walking around or you can jog the recovery. You're just going to have to take a little bit longer to make sure that you're back, but you're going to be burning way more calories at a walk than you would walking. Normally walking because you're still recovering from the really fast hard effort,

Angie: 43:22

right? And if by resting and by walking You're actually allowing your body and your muscles to kind of get in your breathing to catch up and to recover so that you can Hit that high intensity again So if you don't recover properly in between these hard effort sessions a lot of times what? We see is that those times start getting slower and slower and slower as you go through the workout because you're just not able to hit that same effort level again or that effort level. It just feels much harder at a slower pace,

Kevin: 43:51

especially if you accidentally slide even higher than L eight. Cause once you start pushing towards L nine and nine. Plus it starts becoming a very neuromuscular issue and that takes a long time to recover. Like I know going all the way back to when I was in high school, I would watch the sprinters train and they do like a 60 meter sprint and then they would have a time 10 minute recovery window. And I'm like, well, this is ridiculous. Like, meanwhile, we've done eight by a quarter and they're still on recovery for their next 60 meter sprint, but they're going so fast that it's not just muscles that need to recover, but literally the nerve connection from brain to muscle needs time to recover so that you can actually recruit all the. muscle fibers again.

Angie: 44:36

Yeah. So I like to think of this as a spelling bee where it's more intense focus for a short period of time and then a long rest break like in between when other people are spelling like so instead of the S. A. T. This is kind of like the spelling. You get up there, you're nervous, but you know, you have a word that you have to spell, it's intense and then you sit down and you get to rest.

Kevin: 44:58

I don't want to spell intense. Only feel semi confident that it ends S E.

Angie: 45:02

It does.

Kevin: 45:03

Excellent. All right. Um, I really like your metaphors here because I enjoy standardized testing. So sign me up for L5 and I would rather not take a spelling bee right now. And that lines up perfectly. Like I kind of enjoy L8 runs. Like, I enjoy after doing the L8 workouts, but the during is not the most fun process.

Angie: 45:28

Yeah. I disagree. I like the L8 runs. Like, I think they're really fun. Um, some benefits of level eight runs. These help to build your anaerobic capacity. Okay. So you remember when we talked about aerobic capacity, which requires oxygen in L2, L8 It helps to build your anaerobic capacity. So your body's ability to use energy and burn energy when it doesn't have oxygen available. So that's more of like the glucose, the learning how to convert carbohydrates quick, more quickly into usable energy. That's what's helping. That's what your body's practicing more at a level eight,

Kevin: 46:02

right? The thing is that you don't need this massive improvement in anaerobic capacity people are like Oh, well, if I'm if I'm doing a shorter race if I'm doing something like a 5k is that anaerobic and it's like it's

Angie: 46:15

still mostly Aerobic

Kevin: 46:16

it's like over 90 percent aerobic. Okay, but what about like Olympic caliber milers? They're still like 80 percent plus aerobic, like it's an aerobic thing, but the boost that you get from improving your anaerobic system makes massive differences. Yeah,

Angie: 46:31

because then your body can get energy from multiple places, like this is the thing. It's like, you're, how, wouldn't you want to pull energy from multiple sources instead of just one?

Kevin: 46:41

Right. If I have five fuel sources, I want all five of them firing as efficiently as possible.

Angie: 46:45

Exactly. Some of the other benefits is that this really helps to improve your fast twitch muscle fibers and it increases muscle recruitment, which increases your power and your speed. So this, I like to think about this as lifting up a couch. If you are trying to lift and move a couch and you, that's always what I think about. Like I gotta love friends. Um, You trying to pick up a couch on your own you might want you might be able to do it But it's it's gonna be awkward. It's going to be heavy You might be straining yourself if you get one more person to help you It's gonna be a lot easier if you get three people to help you it's gonna be much much easier It's gonna feel much lighter So the more you practice L8, basically your muscles are like, Hey guys, I need some help here. We're trying to work really, really hard. You want to join the party? Because when you contract a muscle, we have like, I don't know if it's, I think it's thousands. I should probably check these numbers, thousands of muscle fibers, hundreds of muscle fibers, depending on what muscle we're talking about and the size of that muscle. But there are a lot of muscle fibers in each muscle. So there's the big muscle and it's broken down into muscle fibers. And when we contract a muscle, Not 100 like 100 percent of your muscle fibers don't all contract at the same time this so let's just pretend I'm making these numbers up. Please don't come at me with like that's not scientifically accurate Okay, so let's pretend that when you contract your muscle when you're out running Normally 50 percent of the muscle fibers contract So when you practice l8 running those muscle fibers that 50 percent they get tired more quickly So they're like hey friends you want to come join the party? So maybe you with l8 training you can 60 percent or 75 percent of your muscle fibers now are contracting. So all of a sudden these muscle fibers are now more active so that when you go out on your other runs, you have more muscle fibers that are active and that are helping to support you in all of your training,

Kevin: 48:41

right? Which makes your L2 feel even easier. And that's where you get this trickle down effect of. running L8, that suddenly your L2 is faster, but still feels just as easy. Now, the goal isn't to necessarily make your L2 faster. It just is a natural by product of the whole system working together.

Angie: 48:59

Yeah. So if you're someone that's like, why would I want to run slower? You, we understand that you don't necessarily want to run slower, but this is one of the things that if you trust the process, if you are able to run your L2 slower, that's going to let you run your L8 harder and faster. When you, when that number gets faster and smaller, then your L2 is also going to start feeling easier. So then your pace will start to improve. So it's like, are you willing to trust the process and then get the beneficial effects from it. Incorporate all three of these types of runs,

Kevin: 49:34

right? Because it, well, you can improve your anaerobic process relatively quickly. The trickle down effects for them to hit your L two takes a little bit of time. So there's a variety of ways to incorporate these things. Um, you can do short repeats, quarter mile repeats. You gave a good example of running fast up a hill. Just run for. 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute up a hill, and then slowly walk your way back down. Don't try and rush this thing and run hard up the hill and then jog back down so that you're still breathing hard at the bottom of it. You didn't recover. Your next hill, hill repeat is not going to go as smooth.

Angie: 50:10

Yeah. I mean, one of the workouts that we have are like one twos or one threes where you're going one minute hard, And then you have a three minute recovery. People are like, what? That's, that sounds ridiculous. I'm not even working then. And yes, your volume of running on those days is going to be smaller. And that's okay. Because when we look at it overall, your training load equals volume plus intensity. So if your intensity is much higher, your volume should naturally be lower on that day, because then it helps to keep your overall training load more balanced

Kevin: 50:41

volume plus intensity volume times.

Angie: 50:44

Sure.

Kevin: 50:44

Okay. Yeah.

Angie: 50:45

Volume times intensity. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's just an equation.

Kevin: 50:48

It's just an equation It's

Angie: 50:50

volume and intensity combined.

Kevin: 50:52

So I'm volume

Angie: 50:53

plus I guess it's times.

Kevin: 50:54

Okay. Yeah There's a combination of the two of those things. Is there some math function involved in there? Alright, so If, if you're going extra hard and you're open and comfortable with walking breaks, walking breaks are a great thing on this. It allows you to be like, all right, I pushed L8. Maybe it slid into L9. I'm going to take a little walking break off of this. One of the ones that I like to do when I start prescribing this for one of our, some of our athletes is give them one threes and say, if you overdid it on the one, Walk for the first minute of your three minute recovery and then slide into a jog and maybe you'll eventually work out what that l8 is so that then you can jog for three minutes but you know it takes some time

Angie: 51:32

that's also one of the reasons i love doing l8 runs is because it allows me to walk during my

Kevin: 51:37

and then you can chat with your friends because you're certainly not chatting during the one portion of a one three

Angie: 51:41

it allows for more socialization which is always a benefit it's

Kevin: 51:44

a benefit of all workouts

Angie: 51:46

yeah exactly so hopefully you guys understand better now you The three main types of runs that you need to incorporate level two, level five, and level eight into your training. If you're training for something shorter, you're probably going to want a little bit more of the higher intensity stuff. If you're training for something longer, you're probably going to need more of the, like the, the, uh, level five types of tempo runs, but you're never going to want to ignore. Any parts of these three things. Okay. You definitely want to incorporate all three of these things into your weekly training plan. And if you are someone that wants a plan and you want some help figuring out how to apply this to your life, you want a plan that helps to incorporate all of these types of runs in a way that works for you. Plus your real life and coaching and community support along the way. Go ahead over to realliferunners. com forward slash Academy and get on the priority list for the Academy today. The doors of the Academy right now are closed, but if you are on that priority list, um, you'll be the first one to know when the Academy is open and when we are accepting new clients. So as always guys, if this was helpful, if this resonated with you, Um, please share it with a friend, share it on social, social media, or leave us a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts so that we can help more runners to run in a way that works for them. Thanks for spending this time with us today. This has been the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 359. Now get out there and run your life.