"Zone 2 is a psyop" post gets shredded by Holmer and Bitter
One runner's 4:34 mile became the internet's training argument of the week.
A runner posting as @skinnyboyriot wrote that zone 2 cardio is a psyop, said that at his fastest he was pushing every run at or faster than threshold, and offered a 4:34 mile as proof. The post ended with a shot at everyone else, telling them to keep running at grandma pace.
Zone 2 is the easy aerobic end of the training week, the pace you can hold while holding a conversation. Threshold is the harder effort you can hold for roughly an hour before it falls apart. The claim, in short, was that the easy stuff is a waste of time.
The replies
Brady Holmer got there first with one line.
Zach Bitter went at the logic instead of the time. "Why should we believe the 4:34 mile was your ceiling and your approach was capable of reaching it?" he asked. That is the whole hole in the argument. One runner's personal best tells you what that runner ran, not what he would have run on a different plan, and not what anyone else should do.
Why should we believe the 4:34 mile was your ceiling and your approach was capable of reaching it?
Steve Magness then posted his own numbers from a different angle. He said his VO2max was 67 when he ran a 4:01 mile, and 76 a few years later when he ran 4:05. Same athlete, better lab number, slower race.
"Performance is what matters. Looking at one number in isolation or chasing it is not the answer," Magness wrote. He called an obsession over any single measure misguided and said performance is holistic.
Performance is what matters. Looking at one number in isolation or chasing it is not the answer.
What it actually means
Nobody in the thread argued that threshold work is bad or that easy running is magic. The pushback was about evidence. A single result from a single runner who only tried one approach cannot settle how anyone should build a training week, and Magness's own before and after shows that even a clean lab metric can move the wrong way relative to race times.
If you take one thing from the argument, take that. Judge a training block by what you run, not by the number you were chasing while you did it.
My grandma runs 4:34/mile pace.
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