What are the "zones?" are these like the cardio heart rate zones?
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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Correct, effectively five different levels of training intensity, with one being the lowest and five being the highest. Polar has a good introduction to the zones.
I'm curious who exactly the article is debunking? Because I've never heard zone 2 described as anything other than what they're saying. It allows you to do long runs, and to recover from harder runs, but the fact that it doesn't replace speed work seems self-evident.
But when runners say, “I trained in Zone 2 for a year and didn’t improve,” the issue is rarely a lack of patience or discipline. It’s usually a misunderstanding of how Zone 2 fits into the larger training picture.
Judging by this quote, I assume the author is referring to people who just train in zone two. Though, if you know there's a zone 2, it follows that you would know that there's other zones that you should be training in too.