The Tyranny of the Comfort Zone

[fe.sweetpea]

http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/ ... -zone.aspx

[La]

In other words, exposing yourself to intense suffering—in a controlled and sensible way, of course—will increase the amount of suffering you can tolerate in races and thereby increase your sustainable speed. That’s right: no pain, no gain.

Sums it up pretty well.

I think we have to define what "suffering" means, though. I don't think he's talking about gutting through a workout where you have a nagging injury pain and just sucking it up. I think he's refering to the burning lungs, the burning quads/hams/calves and overall crappiness you feel when working out hard. We have to be able to distinguish between the two to avoid potential injury.

Think about the level of discomfort you experience in races, and then ask yourself how often you approach this level of discomfort in workouts, if ever. If you’re like most runners I know, and you are honest with yourself, the answer is not very often. Once or twice every week you should expose yourself to near-race-level suffering in high-intensity workouts (track intervals, threshold runs, hill repetitions, etc.). And this discomfort should in fact be an explicit objective of the workout, along with the specific physiological adaptations you seek from it. In my experience, actively seeking the misery of high-intensity fatigue in workouts actually makes it more bearable. And like anything else, you get used to it. Indeed, stepping outside your comfort zone can almost paradoxically become a part of a bigger, braver comfort zone. It’s worth doing.

This last paragraph in the article is interesting because I'd venture that there are many of us who don't experience a lot of discomfort in races. We race at (relatively) the same pace we train at. Mostly that's because the distance itself is the challenge (21.1L, 42.2K, 140.6 miles), so intensity is not really factored in.

I can say that I've felt discomfort (the kind he is referring to) in a race only three times: my first sub-2 half, my 10K PB, and my second sub-2 half.

[Madame Bourette]

This last paragraph in the article is interesting because I'd venture that there are many of us who don't experience a lot of discomfort in races. We race at (relatively) the same pace we train at. Mostly that's because the distance itself is the challenge (21.1L, 42.2K, 140.6 miles), so intensity is not really factored in.

I can say that I've felt discomfort (the kind he is referring to) in a race only three times: my first sub-2 half, my 10K PB, and my second sub-2 half.

I disagree. I suffer in hard training but they are relatively shorts. Long distance workouts are slower.

I mean, it takes me 6 hours to do IMLP bike course in training. I did it in 5:35 during IMLP'07. And I did 5:30 during IMC'09. Same for Florida at 5:10 on flat ground. It's tough to do that on flat ground in training.

I can't get into "that zone" in training. Too tough. I need the race adrenaline to get in.

[ian]

It's a good article and I can't decide whether I agree with most of it and am just nitpicking a few differences or if, like MB, I have a different philosophy on the basic premise.

[La]

This last paragraph in the article is interesting because I'd venture that there are many of us who don't experience a lot of discomfort in races. We race at (relatively) the same pace we train at. Mostly that's because the distance itself is the challenge (21.1L, 42.2K, 140.6 miles), so intensity is not really factored in.

I can say that I've felt discomfort (the kind he is referring to) in a race only three times: my first sub-2 half, my 10K PB, and my second sub-2 half.

I disagree. I suffer in hard training but they are relatively shorts. Long distance workouts are slower.

I mean, it takes me 6 hours to do IMLP bike course in training. I did it in 5:35 during IMLP'07. And I did 5:30 during IMC'09. Same for Florida at 5:10 on flat ground. It's tough to do that on flat ground in training.

I can't get into "that zone" in training. Too tough. I need the race adrenaline to get in.

I think you're interpreting what I said backwards. What I'm saying is that many of us (and you may not be one of those people), don't push ourselves hard enough in races, or we're not able to sustain hard efforts in races because we never train ourselves to do so.

I'm not talking about doing a 5-hour training ride (or 3-hour training run) at race pace. But pushing ourselves harder during (shorter) interval training so as to build up our tolerance for discomfort, which will translate into better performance on race day.

[MichaelMc]

Interesting!

From the comments I was all prepared to disagree with the article, but I very much agree with it.

If I narrow my focus down to people who are training to improve their race times I still find many who "take the easy way", often without recognizing it. Many, many runners train "sort of" fast all the time. This can be very satisfying because you get the feel of speed without feeling much pain. At the beginning they (like everyone else) get fitter and can run even faster (all the time), until they ultimately plateau. Some actually run LESS hard as they get more fit, because the people or race times they are comparing themselves to remain static while their fitness increases (same or better speed, less effort).

The better training plans mix mileage and high intensity effort to produce the most favorable adaptations. I spend a lot of time telling people to slow their long and easy runs down, but the message that often gets lost is "so you can run your speed work HARD ENOUGH". Being disciplined enough to go slow when speed isn't required and PUSH when it will do some good is a critical part of training IMHO. The "comfort zone" for some athletes is too fast for their own good, for others too slow and for many runners it is BOTH

[richie-rich]

i agree with the article as well. i might feel tired at the end of a race but i always feel, in the back of my mind, that i could have pushed more and endured a little more pain to be faster. i find that near the threshold, it's more a mental thing. at least for myself. I've been doing some higher intensity training to try and get my 5k time down. the body can usually handle it, it's my mind telling me to slow down.

[fe.sweetpea]

Interesting!

The better training plans mix mileage and high intensity effort to produce the most favorable adaptations. I spend a lot of time telling people to slow their long and easy runs down, but the message that often gets lost is "so you can run your speed work HARD ENOUGH". Being disciplined enough to go slow when speed isn't required and PUSH when it will do some good is a critical part of training IMHO. The "comfort zone" for some athletes is too fast for their own good, for others too slow and for many runners it is BOTH

Thanks for this very succinct summary! To the point and easy to understand.

[Jwolf]

While I agree in general that many people are training at the wrong intensities (as Michael says, the easy runs are too fast and the hard runs not hard enough), I'm not sure I can subject myself to "near-race discomfort" twice per week as Matt says. That type of extra intensity seems to be a recipe for injury for me, and also sounds like you'd actually be pushing harder than necessary.

[La]

While I agree in general that many people are training at the wrong intensities (as Michael says, the easy runs are too fast and the hard runs not hard enough), I'm not sure I can subject myself to "near-race discomfort" twice per week as Matt says. That type of extra intensity seems to be a recipe for injury for me, and also sounds like you'd actually be pushing harder than necessary.

It depends on the race distance you're training for. Marathon-intensity over a shorter distance (10K) isn't as hard as 5K intenstiy!

[Jwolf]

While I agree in general that many people are training at the wrong intensities (as Michael says, the easy runs are too fast and the hard runs not hard enough), I'm not sure I can subject myself to "near-race discomfort" twice per week as Matt says. That type of extra intensity seems to be a recipe for injury for me, and also sounds like you'd actually be pushing harder than necessary.

It depends on the race distance you're training for. Marathon-intensity over a shorter distance (10K) isn't as hard as 5K intenstiy!

Marathon intensity over 10K is not near-race discomfort. MP at even longer than 10K (I was doing up to 18K) is nowhere near race discomfort.

Similarly, shorter distances at 5K race pace (i.e., intervals) are no where near 5K race discomfort. Sure, it feels super-tough for a minute or two so, but then you recover and do it again. In a race you are spent.

I've read Matt's books and he supports Daniels-type theory for paces. So it's not as if he is pushing people to do their workouts in that too-fast realm that most people agree wastes effort, doesn't effectively improve fitness, and risks injury. So I'm not exactly sure what he means by near-race discomfort.

[MichaelMc]

It is always a challenge when trying to discuss such things as "discomfort": they are completely subjective. It certainly has meaning, but we can't share a common definition since there is no shared sensation.

I think it is important for athletes to learn how to manage discomfort, because by definition whenever you push your boundaries you are GOING to be in discomfort. I hurt during my one mile race, I hurt during my 10k races, I hurt during the last part of my Intervals and Reps in training, and I certainly hurt during the last 5k of a PR marathon. Each one has its own particular 'quality' of pain: in my first sub-3 marathon I was feeling GREAT because I was flying and I realized that I had a solid chance of achieving my goal in spite of a really poor start... none the less, my BODY was in some serious pain, I just knew I could sustain that level of discomfort to the end. Learning the distinction between 'good' pain and "injury" was a critical thing for me as an athlete because doing the SMART thing wasn't natural.

In the bigger sense, running slowly on training days when I'm being 'challenged' by other runners is a type of discomfort, running on those days it isn't convenient (or I just don't feel like it) is uncomfortable. Taking time off when you are injured is the worst kind of discomfort for some runners. Even racing distances we are less capable at is stepping out of a comfort zone. I think good runners have to step out of their comfort zones in a number of ways to achieve their goals, and I admire that.

[Jwolf]

It is always a challenge when trying to discuss such things as "discomfort": they are completely subjective. It certainly has meaning, but we can't share a common definition since there is no shared sensation.

Very true. What I think of as discomfort is the kind of pushing I only save for races.

This is also a tricky thing when people are trying to describe how much more slowly or easily to go on long runs, for example. I remember after my first half-marathon being told about the the virtues of slowing down training runs. I didn't describe my own training pace as slow, and didn't quite understand-- I couldn't imagine going much slower, but was told over and over again that I should slow down. Then when one of these people realized what pace I was actually doing (compared to my 10K and half-marathon times), and actually said I might be going too slowly.

[La]

Maybe the term "slowly" is the sticky wicket. Perhaps "lower intensity" might be a better description. And I define intensity as a combination of HR, PE and pace/km that will change a) as your fitness changes, and b) on a daily basis due to fatigue, illness, etc.

[Jwolf]

And on the other side, I think there is a range of what people consider "uncomfortable" vs. "discomfort" ; one person's discomfort might be another's uncomfortable.

At the same time the words "comfortably hard" are often used for the right feel for a tempo run, one of the hard weekly out-of-comfort-zone runs Matt describes in the article. For many "comfortably hard" is an oxymoron-- the right pace for them might be better self-described as "near race-discomfort" or "uncomfortable."

[ian]

One of the reservations I had about this article is the axiom that many runners are taking shortcuts with their speedwork by avoiding too much discomfort. This is certainly true, but other runners -- particularly a majority of the ones I train with -- are actually more liable to go in the other direction: racing the speedwork so that they neither fully target the appropriate physiological systems nor have optimal recoveries for other workouts in the week. We even see this on RM whenever we debate the "training from where you're at" versus "training to where you want to be" paradigms, since the latter camp is willing to endure training discomfort beyond what the former camp would deem advisable.