[Andrew Bollard]

@zclimber:

The answer is no for the same reasons I outlined above. If you also did heavily weighted aerobic hikes during an ME phase on top of steep weighted carries with a heavy pack, you would run the risk of these hikes essentially being extra Z3 sessions and you would be completely wrecked very soon. While I haven’t done an ME phase with steep weighted carries due to being a flatlander, I have done the gym-based ME progression, and I can safely say that if you’re doing ME right (regardless of modality) then it’s quite unlikely you’d be able to handle heavily weighted aerobic hikes on top of this training. Given that the same muscles used to carry a heavy pack with be heavily fatigued from ME work, how do you expect to be able to throw on a 20+kg pack in the days after an ME session and go do a hike?

Most of us will have to do Z1-only sessions during an ME phase as aerobic base maintenance, because we’ll just be too tired to do Z2. This is purely because of the high neuromuscular load imposed during this period. Even if we are metabolically capable of running or hiking with a heavy pack in Z2 and maintaining a conversational, nose-breathing pace below AeT, the stress imposed on our muscles and joints by the high impact forces of these modalities done in Z2 (assuming you don’t have ADS and the top of your Z2 isn’t quite slow) will be too much to recover from when stacked on top of the high recovery cost of ME work. Your intensity distribution during this period will be polarised something like this: fun-hard, low level burning in the working muscles during an ME session that will take 2-3 days to fully recover from, and super easy, can-do-the-shopping-list-in-my-head-at-the-same-time pace during aerobic capacity sessions.