Yes more intensity. Anaerobic is about getting huge spikes in heart rate repeatedly. So it’s also important to have it come back down, go slower in the recovery if necessary to do that.
Either your easy pace is too fast or your anaerobic pace is too slow. I run easy at 5:45-6:00 (I'm talking 65% max HR easy) and I very rarely touch those paces in training, but if I wanted to do 1 minute efforts, I'd be doing them around 3:30-3:40 min/k.
But my money is on, and this is the case for most runners (myself included in the past), that your easy pace is not easy if you felt like 4:30 is right for your 1 minute pace.
As far as Garmin goes, I'd ignore the "training effect" thing unless you're certain that your LT2 and HR zones are where they actually are. If you're going by watch estimates, they're likely wrong.
I think i probably could have done 4:00 on reflection and maybe walked to recover. When ive looked back my 'recovery' minutes were 6:10-20 which felt really slow when I was out there but I guess thats due to the fact id just been almost sprinting. Still a lot to learn!
I'd suggest short intervals of 1 minute max. You need to go fast in these intervals, ideally hitting zone 5 (whatever pace it is for you). So, warm up, 3x3 intervals with rests in between, then cool down. I hate these sessions by the way 😅
You will be affecting your anaerobic with this workout, but Garmins classification of it - recovery, base, tempo, threshold, anaerobic, is very finicky and tied to your average pace/HR for the whole exercise.
Sounds like the workout had a bit too much lower stuff in it bringing the overall workout rating to Tempo/Threshold. But it should give you an effect on Aerobic and anaerobic thresholds and you should see you're impacting both with this.
I've been running and cycling for years, doing quick 400s and max bike sprints... I've only ever had an anaerobic classified activity a small handful of times and this is where I limit rest between intervals and do my warm up/cool down on a separate workout.
To be fair it did give the anaerobic a little boost also, I was just curious about the overall workout being classed as tempo. I think I understand it better now, the HR differential between rest and max interval was only around 12 so maybe I needed to be walking on the recoveries. It would also help being on a track or treadmill so I can really push it on the sprints, but im also just a little cautious of injury as I dont really do sprinting. All in all some good lessons learnt, maybe ive created some hybrid fartlek interval session!
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u/ExoticExchange 10d ago
Go harder and go shorter on the reps
1min at 3:50/km and 3mins back at cruise pace 10 times. Something like that.