Zone 3 – Tempo or moderate aerobic effort
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First off what is it – This is an effort where it starts to feel and be a little more uncomfortable. An effort that you could hold for roughly a half marathon in duration. They tend to build lactate acid at a higher rate of zone 2 but not as high as zone 4 sessions therefore you can have slightly longer intervals and recovery pretty quickly from them. So dial into what the effort is, they aren’t threshold efforts that are really challenging but a way of building a higher lactate tolerance
How do we measure it
RPE – 6-7 – Uncomfortably comfortable eg half marathon feel
% THR Bike – 84-94
% FTP Bike – 76-90
% THR Run – 90-94
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Why has Zone 3 got a bad name or referred to as the grey zone
Zone 3 is often called the grey zone and stated not to train in it as it can detrimental to the progress fitness. The simple fact is over a number of years athletes have been training the majority of there sessions at too higher intensity (zone 3) not really knowing or not trusting that actually the effort is lower for light aerobic and long term fitness. Knowing when to use this session or intensity can be a huge benefit
Using this zone as the main frame of training is training the wrong fuelling system and builds up fatigue/lactate acid much quicker than zone 2 effort, therefore leaving an athlete not feeling great over long periods of time
How do we use this training zone
Knowing how to use this zone has huge benefit. We use it in events very often so why wouldn’t we train it
these efforts are generally longer reps in all phases of training but become a little more frequent or longer in duration in a certain session as you progress through the phases
Eg
PREP Phase 2-4 intervals of 6-10 mins with 3 mins recovery
BUILD Phase 3-5 intervals of 6-10 mins or 2-3intervals of 10-15 mins with 3 mins recovery
SHARPENING Phase 4-6 intervals of 6-10 mins or 3-5 intervals of 10-15 with 3 mins recovery
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Key Points
Zone 3 is a great way to work with slightly higher levels of lactate acid without and being able to recover/flush it out quicker
It activates higher levels of muscle fibres
We start to burn more carb as fuel rather than fat, so we don’t want it to be the main part of your training
Your doing endurance sports that most of us are last well over an hour, this is a great way to learn about pacing or a cruise speed that works in events that are around half marathon/half IM distance
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