The Trap:I just finished another bike LT test at the center this AM and once again I have been reminded of a lesson I swore I wouldn’t have to learn again……GRRRR!  The lesson goes like this:  Make your easy training easy and make your hard training hard!  Avoid gravitation to the middle!  The trap I run into is that I crave improvement so badly that I end up focusing on pace way too much instead of focusing on heart rate and or power.  For example, my Zone 2 on the bike is from 102bpm to 122bpm or in power, from 140watts to 200watts.  I head out for my long Z2 sets and I try to sit right at 112bpm and 170watts, but I keep glancing at my pace.  “Wow!,” I think to myself, “I’m really rolling today in Z2!  Man!…..I’m holding 36km/hr!  No wait!…….37km/hr!”  Then the dreaming starts.  If I hold this pace in Z2 for an Ironman I will go this fast…..etc…..etc.  BAM! my mind has shifted completely over to pace and I end up “cheating” a bit on heart rate and power to hold my hopeful pace.  When I finish the ride and look at the data I realize I actually spent the majority of the time in low or even middle Z3.  Sure, I will rationalize it by telling myself it “felt” like Z2, and sometimes this is valid, but even in this case, I was probably on the high end of Z2. Lesson Time:So there I sit with my very patient coach, Neal Henderson at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, and we look at the results of my LT test. While we both agree they are good, they could be even better if I can get better at polarizing my effort.  He pulled out some recent training done by one of the best runners the USA has seen in a long while.  (no names….sorry).  Just keep in mind that this guy runs low 28 for a 10k and recently ran a 2:10 marathon.  Holy #$%@!   We looked over a week he put in during a hard phase of training.  He basically had two hard days in the week…..Wed. and Fri.  One of the days he did a set of 10×1km repeats.  The other day he did a long drawn out Z4 set.  The other five days of the week were all low intensity with some small bouts of endurance work spread out over all of the Z2 runs and a few small VO2 max/Z5 efforts on one of the runs.  All together he put in about 110miles for the week.  Those two hard efforts amounted to about 14miles of hard running which is only about 12% of his total volume.  The really hard and short Z5 bouts he did amounted to about 2% of his total volume.  The Z3 work was only about 20% of his total volume.  This means 66% of his running was done in Z1 or Z2!!!!!   Eye Opener:Okay that makes sense.  I coach my athletes and myself with very similar percentages to the above athlete in the hard phases.  But here’s the eye opener for me………We looked in more detail at his easy running, (66% remember!), and he kept the effort no higher than the middle of Z2.  In fact, a huge amount of it was right on the line between Z1 and Z2!  Okay, his easy is definitely easy.  Then we looked at the hard days.  His 10km PR is right around 28:15.  This brakes down to 2:49 per kilometer.  Those 10×1k repeats he did……he ran them right at 2:50 per kilometer!  HARD! HARD! HARD!  His lactate threshold is right around 4:45 per mile.  The long drawn out Z4 set he did was right around 4:55 per mile.  Just barely under threshold!  And what do you know……this works out to right around 2:10 pace for a marathon!  His hard is definitely hard.  I so hope that writing this blog entry will help me to avoid having to learn this lesson again in the future.  It’s all about Polarization of the effort.  Until next time, shop at trisports.com using my discount code chowie-s, eat more powerbar, and tell your endurance family you love them.