We talk about the different training paces in a more technical way. You may know your training paces but it may help to understand the science behind the Chatty Sparkly approach.
Your body has three ways of generating energy.
Aerobic which is using oxygen with fuel.
Alactic which uses ten seconds of stored energy in your muscles.
Anaerobic which is a linking system and an emergency system, that doesn’t use oxygen.
What happens when you go for a run?
When you start off you use the alactic system to get you going for the first ten seconds. It is like your start up motor. Your aerobic system takes a while to kick in so your anaerobic system steps in and links the alactic to the aerobic system. This is why you sometimes feel quite breathy when you start running, even though you are not running any faster than your normal Chatty pace. If you do very gradual warm up, you will give your aerobic system time to get working and you won’t feel breathy. After a minute and a half your aerobic system is working fully and allowing you to run at a comfortable Chatty pace.
Chatty pace
This pace just uses the aerobic energy pathway but some anaerobic energy being used. You will be breathing easily as you are able to get enough oxygen in for the energy you need and your pulse will be around 60% of your maximum.
Breathy pace
As you go a bit faster than Chatty you go through something called the ventilatory threshold. At this pace you are beginning to produce a bit more lactic. Your body is beginning to call on the anaerobic system. This makes you breathe more rapidly. You can run at this pace for quite a while, as it is still mostly aerobic, but you won’t be able to keep going for as long as you can at Chatty pace.
Part sentence pace
At this pace you can talk in only part sentences. The anaerobic system is contributing more to your overall energy but the amount of oxygen you can use hasn’t reached its maximum. The body starts to produce a little bit of acidity at this pace. If you run at this pace your body will use the lactic produced as a fuel. It cleverly recycles it so you can maintain this pace for around one hour. This is why we sometimes call this pace one hour competition pace.
Is it worth running at part sentence pace?
You will see this pace called tempo running on many training plans. However, we don’t recommend it. It is a very limited adaption. All the fitness gains you want can be gained by training at Chatty pace with a bit of breathy running added to the mix. These paces will make your heart bigger, increase the blood capillaries to your muscles and generate more mitochondria. These adaptions will improve your speed at part sentence pace anyway. Running faster at 5k pace will also contribute to a faster part sentence pace.
5km pace
Here the amount of acidity in the body really builds up. Much more of the anaerobic system is being used at this pace but you still haven’t reached the maximum amount of oxygen you can use. You can’t recycle the lactic at this pace so it builds up in the body, making you out of breath and heavy legged.
10 minute competition pace
Run as fast as you can for ten minutes and you will use a significant amount of anaerobic energy. At this pace you are using the maximum amount of oxygen that you can. Training sessions at this pace are valuable as long as they involve intervals with adequate recovery.
Should you train at 10 minute pace?
You will need to have a strong aerobic engine in order to cope with sessions at this pace. This is where completing a lengthy conditioning or base phase is key. Then timing when to add faster anaerobic sessions will depend on when your target race is. The anaerobic energy system is limited and can only be trained for four to six weeks. It is the icing on the cake in any training cycle.
Using aerobic energy is about sixteen times more efficient than the anaerobic system. That means you get sixteen times the amount of energy for the food you put in. Staying Chatty and building up the amount of running you do will make you fitter without the stress on the body of anaerobic training. Anaerobic training produces stress hormones and causes inflammation. You will need a much longer recovery time after these sessions. You won’t be able to do the volume of running needed to make you fitter. Remember it is the volume of running you do not the speed you go at that make you a faster runner.
We hope that having some information on the science behind how we produce energy will help you with your training. Know your training paces and train smart.
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