Zone 2 on a turbo trainer…

Nice one @molgrips 👌🏻

It’s funny, I’m not less busy than when I used to train 7hrs a week on TR but riding lots of endurance has made me crave riding my bike more 🤷🏻‍♂️
Doing lots of centuries last year makes 2hrs seem short too.

I had 2hrs endurance on the plan tonight but I wasn’t recovered enough from yesterday.
Did 1h at 201w on a Zwift C group ride and pulled the plug.

That’s the dilemma I find myself struggling with self coaching- at what point does a “Breakthrough” ride become too hard? I guess if you can’t recover in 48hrs before it’s time for the next ‘breakthrough’ ride 🤔

I’ve now bumped tomorrow up to 2.5hrs low endurance with 10 form sprints in the first hour but I’m going to monitor how I feel and pull the plug again if I’m still fatigued. I wanted to hit 14h this week if possible but will cut myself some slack as it’s all looking like being indoors 😴

I want to make sure I “absorb” Tuesday’s effort too- otherwise it was a waste of energy.

A question, which I’m sure has been answered at some point over the last 12 pages, but, is it favourable to train to Z2 heartrate or Z2 power? I find that if I’m Z2 power, then I’m mostly Z1 HR.
Having done no official testing to work out my max HR or whatever, I’m sure these are comparatively arbitrary factors, but just wondered.

Z1 HR, 3 zone model…roughly no higher than 70-75% of max HR

Z2 power will help you pace it, but you may need to pace down a tad if your HR is elevated (due to various reasons]

Early season, pace by Z2 HR and measure power. Later, once you’ve hit your target longest ride without power dropping off at this HR, target a power number for your same target longest ride and keep doing it until your HR doesn’t go up.
(Google aerobic decoupling https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/aerobic-endurance-and-decoupling/)

Or, if trying to follow dr ISM’s method, push right up against “the talk test” which will likely be high z2 or low z3 power 😀

To elaborate on that a little, here’s a really good example from Georgio Copolla’s Strava.

He’s riding what looks like ERG mode 195w for 210 minutes but if you look, his HR goes up considerably in the second half of the ride even though the power hasn’t changed.

By contrast, if he had followed his HR, then the power would have had to drop off to compensate.

So you do more work by riding Z2 to power but it is also a more stressful ride.

And here’s one of my drISM “talk test” rides. HR starts low Z2 and hits high Z2 after 2hrs. Power was (probably, I don’t really bother testing FTP at the minute) low tempo start to finish.
Had I carried on longer, no doubt my HR would have gone up exponentially.

Because I wanted to ride these using ERG mode, I made a couple of educated guesses as to where my “talk test” wattage would be. The first go at 220 was too easy but this was spot on.

(I think the Strava Sauce pw:hr number is your decoupling score. So Georgio was working 5% harder by the end of his 3.5hrs for the same watts which is actually vey good given the hours he’s been training lately and not far off of Friel’s under 5% guideline. )

Cheers Crosshair. Clears things up a bit. I tend to ride to power, as I do any kind of focussed work inside on the trainer, and found that generally my HR was lower than I’d expected. Still, like your examples, the other day I did 2 hrs and found that by the end my HR was increasing. Decoupling seems to be vaguely around 5%, but it’s rare I ride with both power and HR (turbo) for more than 2 hours.

If you are still in base, you can kind of use it to reverse-engineer your training sessions too. So if 2hrs is your session time limit, and you’re at 4% decoupling, then you can up the watts over a couple of goes until you find the point at which it’s up to say 6 or 7% again. That way you can avoid stagnating. Then hold the new power for a couple of weeks until decoupling gets under 5% at the new higher power.

my hr decoupling varies, on 2hr zone 2 rides, a quick look back from as little as 0.5% over 2hrs, to 6%+ on 1 hour rides, (assume the 1hr is skewed by stabilisation of HR?)

random selection from the last 2 weeks here, and the last one is clear decoupling, which is the first ride of “block 2” after reducing intensity and duration by about 50% (to 3/4 hours) for a week

(Intervals also has this as an option in the fields drop down box on the ride analysis charts)

should I take that as a sign I should nudge the Z2 a bit higher, my Z2 is apparently 141-192w and these were all done at 180 or 185w, so “upper”

I guess it depends how you are structuring your week. I like to have clear ‘Easy endurance’ days that are often high Z1 average outdoors but when I’m actually pushing on the pedals are low to mid Z2.
Then I like to have one crisp breakthrough ride each week. Because time is limited to 3hrs max, they’re the ones I’ve had to progress up through into Tempo and now Sweetspot to make sure the progressive overload is there.

Looking at those 2x two hour rides in the middle, they’re obviously still great training so I guess it depends what else you are doing in the week. If you want to be fresh for some HIIT then maybe leave them the same or if you want to try and nudge your LT1 up then maybe add 10w and see what happens??

I’m not really structuring it, just doing a lot of Z2 with either a Zwift race or effort after a z2 session once a week,

I’m very much “on the fly” 1000 things could come up a day, just switching between 1/2hrs on what time I have available, take this week, I have 2 days at uni, 2 meetings at the kids schools, a coffee morning, 1 kid off school because of strikes and 2 night shifts, thats without fitting in “life” around everything else, I’ve tried to plan in advance, it always ends in failure and non concordance with sessions, 2/3 hours is certainly my max duration for turbo, lighter nights/better weather will allow me to stretch that

Wee bump, I had possibly one of the best indoor sessions I’ve had this lunchtime, 1hr20minute Z2 on the rollers.

I think I’m getting over some of my discomfort issues on the bikes (off-bike physio) and pumped the tyres up a wee bit harder which on the rollers makes it easier for a given speed but also smoother.

Then I plugged in my favourite mix off YouTube (below) which gets crazy upbeat and euphoric at around about the 45 minute mark, and zoned out to some helmet cam footage of the Tour of Flanders that someone recorded.

I don’t know if it was the intensity, the tunes, the nose breathing or the (sort of, to a cobble fetishist) inspiring footage, but I was struggling not to launch into a full gas effort in the latter half of the workout, the old endorphins seemed to be kicking in and I just felt amazing! Would be curious if that sort of feel-good rush is just luck, the music choice or something to do with the nice smooth easy intensity.

Anyway, will repeat the experiment next chance I get with my SAD lamp beside the laptop as well, I’ll be off my tits on endorphins! 🤣

I ride the classics on my rollers in Z2/3 depending on gearing of the fixed wheel. Then I take a mental break when the adverts come and ease down the power. When the pros go hard, it’s time to push a little harder. Three hours on the rollers is OK. I now have some powered Elite rollers too. The effect is subtle and the onboard power meter is hopelessly optimistic. It will, however pass through my Assioma power to Zwift instead.

Rollers are just great. And you will pedal like a god. 

I now have some powered Elite rollers too. The effect is subtle and the onboard power meter is hopelessly optimistic.

I am very tempted by crank based power, I’ve been relying on consistent tyre pressure etc. in an attempt to make some sense out of my virtual speed (although the Elite power curve is extremely flattering, apparently I have an FTP of 370W 😂) but deep down I know it is just guesswork.

Three hours on the rollers is OK

Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!!

Rollers are nothing like a turbo. You move a lot and get out of the saddle. And of course spend time trying not to fall off. Just need to take your mind off the boredom and a classics race does that. The elite rollers read about 30W too high based on my Assioma, they do, however estimate cadence accurately.  

Z2 thread is back!

I can do 1 hour Z2 like it’s nothing if I have something to watch, footy live doesn’t work as I focus on what minute is on and it feels so long, nor does switching between YouTube vids, Breaking Bad got me through so many hour sessions earlier this year, 1 episode and its nearly done, but I know longer sessions are needed more, 2 hours is fine as well if I can get through minutes 45-75 without being distracted as it’s only then, breaking bad failed somewhat here as you switch between 3 episodes, and my brain goes we have 2 episodes to go, same with cycling if I can see how many km is left and what the parcour is, but ticking off Zwift routes for XP helped weirdly, as it was a goal of somewhat to tick them off,

Timely thread bump!
I’m procrastinating wildly over getting going again.

But did last year work? Unequivocally yes.

It all culminated at the Tour of Cambridgeshire fondo 100.

I ended up doing 248w average and 284np for 4h30.

But because I got dropped out of the lead group on the first rise, I actually hit one of my main goals for 2023 which was to do 300w np for 2 hours with 309w np 🤣

Regrettably, what I discovered is that at those kind of speeds, even that’s not enough watts to
overcome aerodynamics and hills at 15 stone so I basically lost all interest in cycling.

There’s a load of lads in our local circle who refer to themselves as ‘Fast as F’ and it just peed me off that they were getting their rocks off over ‘fast’ rides that were like 205w average and 230w np for a couple of hours. I mean, purleeeeease! Those are Z2 numbers 😉
I realised genetically I’m not the right frame to be a cyclist.

Training 10-12 hours a week made me really hungry so I didn’t even lose any weight. Or even tone up very much to be honest. I just got very good at pushing pedals down.

So I bought a Chinese mini ADV motorbike and spent the summer riding with an engine instead 🤣

I also got back into fishing which has lead me down the road of wanting to learn spear fishing and so am swimming a couple of times a week in the local pool.

So now, I’m pretty sure there’s no residual fitness left from my stonking form in June and I want to finally, after 2.5 years of trying, lose the weight that’s holding me back on the bike.

With that in mind, I think Zwift will be reactivated this week and I’ll try and fill in days between swimming with Z2. Seems there’s even a few new routes to tick off. I may throw in a weekly Zwift race just to help with lactate clearance as that should help my underwater swimming.

Goal is loosely Dirty Reiver ‘24 so with one month blocks, I’ve got room for Base/Base/Base/Build/Build and a short peak.

Data wise I have no idea where I am at so will see what the first few rides bring.

Better see if the new puppy has eaten all the turbo wires 🤣🤣

i better get a ride in with you now while you’re at your worst 😀

You boys are machines. I’ve just restarted Zwift. Did an hour last night, mostly Z2 and averaged about 130w. It was a random Watopia ride and the few sprints I did that lasted 30-40 seconds, I couldn’t manage anything more than 450w for that time. Going to be a long hard winter if I’m to get fitter and stronger.

With regards to decoupling, presumably I couldn’t measure that as I don’t have a power meter? Or is there some mathematical alchemy that coughs up a useful number?

I’ve been trying to do a couple of hours a week (time poor, generally) at zone 2, though strayed slightly over (Ave HR was 117, my max z2 116). 30 miles in 2hrs 7mins. Would it be worth stopping the ride at the end of hour one, then recording hour two, to get some comparison, or am I overthinkng it?

 zoned out to some helmet cam footage of the Tour of Flanders 

I cannot watch other people riding when I’m on the rollers, because when they go around corners…

I cannot watch other people riding when I’m on the rollers, because when they go around corners…

🤣

I almost panic grabbed the brakes yesterday as they came up behind some stopped traffic at speed.

@chives Yeah, decoupling needs two numbers (the work you are doing V the cost to the body) so is tricky without a power meter. You could use speed but probably only a velodrome would give accurate enough conditions. And it depends if you’re wanting easy or progressive Z2 🤣For the former, just stick at that HR and ignore everything else. For the latter, you want to actually ride at the ‘talk test’ intensity and just record your HR to see how stable it is. Once you can do talk test for 2 hours without your HR increasing towards the end you then need to find other ways to stress your body (add time, frequency or intensity to your week). 

Cheers @crosshair, I thought that might be the case! 

I cannot watch other people riding when I’m on the rollers, because when they go around corners…

🤣

I almost panic grabbed the brakes yesterday as they came up behind some stopped traffic at speed

I once jumped to head the ball while running in a gym & watching a footy match on screen 😅

Do any of the training apps/programs that control trainer resistance according to heart rate limits? I see that zwift doesn’t saying that heart rate doesn’t respond quick enough to power changes, although IMO that really doesn’t count for zone 2, that should only Impact interval workouts. Plus I find zwift quite irritating for training, I find the disconnect between the trainer resistance and the virtual terrain a bit off putting. I think they need some much longer flat and rolling loops.

I use Zwift and a Wattbike – the link between resistance/power via gear shifting/terrain and HR is instantaneous on this setup.

I find zwift quite irritating for training, I find the disconnect between the trainer resistance and the virtual terrain a bit off putting.

Ah. Do you mean when you’re in ERG mode and the climbs/descents don’t align with increases and decreases in resistance? Zwift were supposed to be introducing terrain-based workouts but they’ve not appeared yet. 

There’s plenty of flat routes in zwift..

I hear what you’re saying. I get annoyed (well, not really, but…) When the workout ramps up but I’m going downhill!!

DrP

Would reducing the trainer difficulty help?

think I’m back, bit on an enforced lay off, with whatever this was

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/diagnose-my-leg-issue-ianad/#post-13024814

3 weeks since my last ride, finished about as fast and fit as I’ve ever been, but it’s got dark, cold and wet quickly, will ease in, tick off some of the new strava route badges

I did quite a lot of Z2 stuff last spring… with a weekly Zwift race at Z5 it worked well for me. I maintained the Z2 focus into spring, but without the weekly Zwift race as the weather was nice. By summer if felt I had no top end. Re-introduced Zwift, albeit with a lot more threshold work and have since got back to where I was in the Spring. Now 3 weeks into Build Me Up, as I wanted a bit of forced structure. Will probably go back to something more polarised once I’ve worked through that to maintain fitness

I’m still very torn/confused about my shorter mid-week Z2 sessions.

Loooooong story short, with my midweek routine and the rehab stuff I’m trying to do in the gym, it’s really difficult to do more than two sessions on the rollers, and usually no more than 90 minutes.

I’m sure ISM suggested 90 minutes was the bare minimum required to really achieve any benefits, so I’m wondering if I should just switch to sweetspot workouts mid-week and try a bit harder to keep my weekend rides Z2 (winter gravel rides tend to become CX rides very easily!).

Hence, I think, the focus on the ‘time crunched cyclist’ and all the excitement about sweetspot in previous years, seems to have evolved from ‘what can I usefully do with 45 minutes before dinner’ etc. etc. 🙄

I was told that Z3 is about the same benefits as Z3 but you can do it in less time.

Hey folks, thought this might be interesting – my goals are much earlier this year than the last few, with an ultra race in April, so decided to do primarily dedicated zone 2 blocks since November.

Total of 18-20hrs per week, with either 3 or 4 “on” weeks in the block depending on timing (i.e I wanted xmas as a rest week, and need to push current block to 4 weeks, so I can get a rest week before a trip to Lanzarote!).  Mid-week usually consisted of Mon-Thur 3hrs per day (most of the time split into 2x90mins), with a big ride on Saturdays (either outside, or 8-10hrs on turbo in z2).

Here’s a graph showing the increase in power for any given Z2 HR(or conversely, lower HR for same power) comparing the last 3 months with ALL of the preceding year.  It’s around 20-40w increase across zone 2, depending on higher/lower bounds (at around 81-83kg).

(sorry, snipped the Y axis : it’s % of max hr)

8-10hrs on turbo in z2

😳👏

I’ve recently been doing some Zwift sessions in one gear with trainer difficulty off, forcing me to stay in zones 1/2, regardless of route profile.