Floris Gierman is the co-founder of Path Projects, host of The Extramilest podcast and running coach at PBprogram.com.
He started the New Year by running a solo Sub 3 Hour Marathon and while running, he gave a "TED talk" about 10 years of low heart rate training.
Click here to watch the video.
- "Aerobic training can be frustrating in the early stages, because most runners have to slow down their running pace significantly and take walk breaks to keep their heart rate down. Changing your watch settings from pace and distance to heart rate and time can help, so you focus on time spend in HR zone"
- "Injuries, overtraining and burnouts are at record high levels. Over the years, I've become a strong believer in optimizing health first and your running performance will follow."
- "Rest and recovery are crucial for improvements. Training more is not always the answer, we have to recover from our efforts. Quality sleep should be a top priority."
- If you are not improving, look inside. Instead of right away increasing your training heart rate zone, running volume or intensity, take an honest look at your sleep quality, stress levels and nutrition to see if something can be improved here.
- Be flexible in your training! Adjust your training plan on the day to day if needed. If my 6 year old daughter is sick and I have a poor night sleep, I cut back my running duration or intensity. If I feel good and energized, I run a bit longer. Training flexibility is key.
- Be patient and consistent. Over the past 10 years I have run 17095 miles (27511km) in 2586 hours. That's only 5 hours per week / 42 minutes per day. Building an aerobic engine takes time, small gradual progress over long periods of time, start adding up.
Floris's Favorite PATH gear:
- Graves PX 7" Shorts
- Lynx PD 8" liners
- Muir cap
- Killam PX pants
- Pyrenees T19 hooded shirt
- Cascade T-shirt