Training

Your friends head out for an easy run and chat their way through 5:30 kilometres. You try the same thing with a heart rate cap and end up at 7:00, watch beeping, feeling like you’re barely moving. It’s easy to assume your zones are broken, or your body is. Usually neither is true. There are

Most people sign up for a sprint triathlon before they’re ready. That’s fine. That’s how it should work. The trouble starts when they look for a plan and find either something built for athletes already training 10 hours a week, or a patchwork of Reddit advice. This is a free 12-week sprint triathlon training plan

I’ve been quietly stalking Canyon Grizl builds for a few months now, telling myself it’s just research for The Rift or Unbound, not an actual commitment. The more Unbound race reports I read, the less it sounded like a straightforward physical test and the more it sounded like something closer to respect than a PR

Plenty of triathletes set one zone 2 heart rate and use it everywhere: same number on the bike, same number on the run, same number for every easy session in between. Then the ride feels suspiciously comfortable while the legs burn out before the watch says anything, or the recovery run somehow drifts ten beats

Zone 2 has had a strange couple of years. It went from a training zone triathletes used quietly to a thing longevity podcasters talk about like it’s a supplement. Somewhere in that jump, a few claims got repeated so often they started sounding like settled fact. Some of them are not. I went through the

Type “how to find zone 2” into any search bar and you’ll get four different formulas within the first five results, each claiming to be the correct one. One site tells you to subtract your age from 220 and take 60 to 70 percent. Another swears by 180 minus your age. A third wants you

You just crossed the line at your first Olympic distance race, and the 70.3 is already living in your head. Everyone says it’s a step up, but nobody tells you what that actually means week to week. Is it just more of the same sessions, stretched longer? I’m going through that exact jump myself right

Your watch handed you five heart rate zones the day you took it out of the box. It worked them out from your age and nothing else. Every zone session you have done since is built on an assumption about an average person who is not you. The fix does not need a lab, a

Your watch shows you a VO2 max number, and it feels weirdly official. Mine crept up over a training block and I wanted to believe it. But the watch never measured my oxygen. It made an educated guess off heart rate and pace. So the fair question, and the one worth answering before you get

Here is a pattern that shows up in almost every beginner’s training log. Every run sits in the same narrow band of pace. The easy days are not really easy, and the hard days are not really hard. It all feels productive, because every run leaves the legs a little tired. That constant tiredness is