All About The Aerobic Base With Hugo Van Den Broek - 2:12 Marathoner

I had the distinct pleasure of chatting to Hugo Van Den Broek on the latest Extension Fitness podcast.

(You can follow Hugo here, Kenya Camp Iten here).

Hugo is my running coach, but that’s not his main claim to fame ;)

Hugo runs Kenya Camp Iten, a running camp in distance running mecca - Iten, Kenya. It’s a place where runners come from all over the world to train, learn and experience the Kenyan approach to distance running.

Hugo is also an ex-pro runner, with a marathon PB of 2:12. Not bad!

These days, in addition to running the camps, he coaches Kenyan athletes (including young runners pursuing athletic scholarships in America) and other athletes all over the world via his online coaching business.

I came across Hugo via the Conversations About Running podcast and was struck by his intelligent approach. Hugo is a guy who can make complex things simple, and he helps athletes to focus on what matters most. And not get distracted by peripheral things (like ice baths).

Here’s a breakdown of our discussion under the relevant headings. Skip to the last section if you’re most interested in learning about the aerobic base.

Why Go To Kenya?

Hugo said that one of the main things Western runners get out of going to Kenya is observing how focussed the Kenyans are on their craft. They run, eat, sleep, recover, socialise a bit and … nothing else.

Contrast this to western athletes, who are often busier and more stressed, maybe sleeping less, and that goes part of the way to explaining the performance difference.

Not much help to amateurs (we can’t just retreat to a running monastery) but it is useful to know that’s what it takes to reach your potential.

This may help you to avoid make silly comparisons between your performance and the performances of people who can allocate tons on time to running. BUT, if you can squeeze in more sleep, more rest and have fewer distractions, it will probably help.

Kenyan runners also have a communal approach to performance. They love to help each other succeed!

Hugo reports that runners often get a real performance boost after attending a camp - so please think about it and get in touch with Hugo!

The Aerobic Base

Before I get into the meat of this article, it is worth defining training zones as they are referred to repeatedly below.

These can be based on heart rate, pace or power (this is extremely common in cycling and less common in running).

Hugo was referring to a 5 zone system. Each zone represents a range of intensities, moving from jogging in zone 1 to very fast running in zone 5.

Here’s where they are roughly:

Zone 1 = jogging to easy running (or thereabouts)

Zone 2 = steady running (or thereabouts)

Zone 3 = “Tempo” / Marathon Pace/effort (or thereabouts)

Zone 4 = Half-marathon pace/effort (or thereabouts)

Zone 5 = 5K pace/effort and above (or thereabouts)

There are different ways to calculate your zones. With my athletes, I use a 30-minute time trial, take the average heart rate and pace, and then apply the calculators in my training platform, Final Surge.

What Is The Aerobic Base?

It’s NOT an official physiological term, rather a term coaches use to refer to a few different things.

Number 1: How much mileage you can handle. (This can be running mileage or cycling mileage. Think of it as aerobic mileage).

Number 2: Physiological changes exhibited by someone with a well developed capacity for endurance (like a low resting heart rate, a quick recovery heart rate - where your heart rate comes down quickly after finishing hard effort AND a stable heart rate - not climbing - for a long time during steady/tempo runs of 30-60 minutes).

Number 3: The gap in pace between your easy, tempo (marathon pace), threshold (half marathon pace) and fast paces (e.g. 5K). An athlete with a good base exhibits an easy running pace which is relatively fast in relation to their higher paces.

For example, a runner who can average 4:30/K over a half marathon and has a strong base would exhibit a tempo (zone 3) pace of 4:45/K, a steady (zone 2) pace of 5:00/K and a zone 1 pace of about 5:20/K. The bigger the gaps, the weaker the base.

Number 4: The ease with which an athlete can handle harder training. If you have a good base, you’ll recover from, and respond well to, harder sessions.

Why Build It?

Distance running is heavily dependant on a strong aerobic system (creating energy WITH oxygen).

Athletes with a good base (a well developed aerobic engine) can absorb the hard running needed to get faster. They also tend to respond better to the hard training.

They can do hard training and recover well, both within the session and between sessions. This means they can stack together repeated sessions week in, week out without getting injured or overly fatigued. Having this capacity is “a condition (or pre-requisite) to recover well and respond well to the harder workouts”.

Hugo said a strong base is the foundation of the house. The walls are the harder workouts. If the foundation is strong, you can go up higher.

Which Events Is It Relevant For?

An aerobic base is especially relevant for 800 metres and up. Hugo says that 800m champions can run over 100km per week sometimes! But it varies a bit depending on whether the 800m runner is more speed driven or endurance driven.

For sprinters, this is not so relevant.

Most people reading this will be interested in 5K and over. So, yes, building a strong base is important for you!

How You Evaluate It?

This is not easy according to Hugo. He suggested the reason for evaluation is not so much to answer the question “is my base any good?” but to say “this is where I’m at today”. To check it and then improve it.

Your base may not be optimal if;

• over the course of a 45-60 minute easy/steady run in cool weather your heart rate creeps up quite a bit

• you’re not doing as much easy mileage as you can possibly fit in given your time constraints and other training needs

• you find it really hard to bounce back from hard running during an intervals session

• interval workouts really smash you up, leaving you extremely sore or drained

• your heart rate doesn’t come down very quickly after a hard effort (as a guide, you should probably expect it to come down by 30 beats or more after a minute)

Hugo detailed how to do the “Zoladz Test” (named after the Hungarian Exercise Physiologist) to evaluate your base fitness.

First of all, you determine your anaerobic threshold heart rate (your average heart rate during a one hour race - or 30 minute solo time trial).

Tim’s input (not Hugo’s): If you don’t want to do a 30-minute time trial, refer to a recent hard 5K and then determine 95% of that by taking the average heart rate and multiplying it by 0.95. What you get is your lactate threshold heart rate (aka anaerobic threshold heart rate), which is at the TOP of zone 4.

For me, this is 169 beats per minute (bpm).

Then we go 10 beats up, which for me is 179bpm. We’ve now defined the top of zone 4 and 5.

Then we go 10, 20 and 30 beats down which gives us the top of zone 3, zone 2 and zone 1.

My zones would be: 1 = 139bpm, 2 = 149bpm, 3 = 159bpm, 4 = 169bpm, 5 = 179 bpm.

(I’ll note that, for me, I very rarely get my heart rate up to 179 bpm so I think I would need to take that with a grain of salt and modify it).

Ok, we’re ready to do the test.

Importantly, the test is done on flat ground. Bring something to write with, or be prepared to use the lap function of your GPS running watch.

First, we warm up. Then we run 6 minutes at the zone 1 heart rate. Try your best to keep the heart rate constant by maintaining a consistent pace. Then measure the distance.

Take a 2 minute break then repeat the process for your zone 2, 3, 4 and 5 heart rates. Each 6 minute interval is followed by a two minute rest.

As your base gets better, you’ll observe that you will travel further in the six minute interval across all zones, but especially zones 1 and 2.

This test is good because it doesn’t depend so heavily on motivation and pushing hard, which is most definitely a factor for a 30-minute time trial, which depends HEAVILY on how much you can push yourself to suffer. It’s more purely physiological (the Zoladz test). This test separates out the physiology from the motivation.

How Do You Build It?

Easy mileage (which means zone 1 & 2 running, AND zone 3 & 4).

The ideal is certainly to do a lot of “easy” running - zone 1 & 2, but be aware that if your time is limited you can’t necessarily adhere to the 80/20 principle (which states that 80% of your running mileage should be zone 2 or under).

Hugo said that to build up your base, a tried and true formula is to do a hard workout 2-3 times per week and then fit in as much easy running as you possibly can. This can work for busy amateur runners, who are juggling work and family commitments.

Here’s how with 4 sessions a week:

• 2 easy runs (1 short - 45 mins - and one long - building up to 2 hours even)

• 2 hard runs

• One of those hard runs each week is zone 3 (e.g. 60 minutes with 3 x 10 mins moderate) or zone 4 (e.g. 60 minutes with 5 x 1600m threshold or half marathon pace)

• The other hard run in the week incorporates some zone 5 - but only a judicious amount (e.g. 30 minutes easy then 6 x 3-400m @5K pace)

• In summary, run as much as you can, go hard twice a week and do a weekly long run

Now, that’s still a lot of running and won’t suit most people. If you can only do 3 x 60-minutes per week, here’s how you could approach it:

• Understand that this formula is not ideal but is a compromise given your limited time

• 30-36km/week but 12km of quality running

• Try to increase the amount of quality (faster) running in comparison to the above (the 4 sessions/week example)

• 1 easy long run (ideally greater than 60 minutes)

• Add some zone 3 and 4 intervals in one of your runs (e.g. 5 x 5 minutes - but make sure you finish the 5th one thinking “I could do two more of those before it was REALLY hard”)

• Add some zone 5 intervals into your other run (e.g. 6 x 90s - again, finishing the sixth one knowing you could do 1 or 2 more at that pace before you really had to strain to hold that pace)

Exactly what is right for you depends a lot on how much time you can allocate to training, how quickly you can recover from harder sessions, your propensity to get injured and various other factors (like how much sleep you’re getting).

At the end of the podcast, we touched on the popular 80/20 method. We discussed some of the methodological issues with this research, and how it impacts the applicability to the typical amateur runner as well as some logical issues in advocating recreational runners emulate the practices used by professional athletes.