I really like the idea proposed by Seiler (2007) that the high volume of low-intensity training among professional athletes may primarily serve as a fatigue management method, as it allows the nervous system to reach homeostasis quickly.
The other parameter is duration, obviously. An easy ride can become a hard ride if you ride for 5 hours.
I think there is a distinct psychological quality mirrored by the nervous system behavior in reaction to easy rides.
Seiler, however, concludes that training is bi-polar: Everything bellow the first threshold (Zone 1 in his model) and everything above, as it āhardā.
But it seems odd to me. Subjectivelly, training in zone 2 is much more repeatable than Zone 3 sessions.
What do you think?
STEPHEN SEILER, OLAV HAUGEN, and ERIN KUFFEL (2007): Autonomic Recovery after Exercise in Trained Athletes: Intensity and Duration Effects, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 8, 2007, Vol. 39, S. .
When comparing a 3-zone to a 5-zone model, this makes sense to me.
The hardest a ride can be, in my opinion, and still be classified as easy (depending on duration, as you mentioned) would be the top of zone 2, which, in his three-zone model, would be the top of zone 1.
Anything above Z2 in a 5-zone model could be classified as hard (tempo, sweet spot, threshold, VO2 max, etc.)
I agree to a point but just because something isnāt āas hardā doesnāt mean itās not hard in the context of nervous system activity and recovery.
Also, without being super deep into Seiler or this research I would assume these workouts are all take to or very near TTE. So theyāre doing SS or FTP for as long as they can and extending that every workout. So when you compare workouts with 20m of VO2 to 60m of FTP to 100+m of SS I think itās fair to say they are all āhardā.
But if youāre doing SS because youāre time restricted and you just do 3x10m @90% in an hour long workout. Then yeah, that might not be all that hard and is probably super repeatable for a long time.
Marinus Petersen, a coach, seems to prescribe workouts to his athletes using these principles. You can listen to him on a bunch of podcasts particularly The Empirical Cycling podcast and Endurance Innovations.
He is in the more volume is better camp and these athletes are doing 5-6-7 hour rides all under the first threshold (vt1, LT1, aerobic threshold, whatever you want to call it).
I find it fascinating. Personally Iām never going to do 5 or 7 hour rides. Possibly a lower hour per week amateur could/should stick to keeping it under VT1 for those 3 hour endurance rides.
I personally experimented Seilerās methods a few years ago. I did one single 3 hour group ride a week as my only intensity and then was doing another 8-10 hours a week keeping my HR under 125bpm. This is where I estimated my VT1 based on what Seiler said in podcasts.
I have to say that it really worked. I was hitting Strava segment PRs left and right by week 7 (on that group ride). In particular was an all out 8 minute climb and a 20 minute long effort during that group ride.
Interestingly, I stalled out on PRs and didnāt get any faster through week 12 doing this kind of training. Iām not sure what the conclusion is. I got all the gains I was going to get in a short amount of time doing this? It would have been interesting to see where it went if I had added a single day of intensity to this plan. Or, see what would have happened if I did this for a year.
Unfortunately, it was a bit boring. I was listing to 3 books a week noodling around at 120bpm. Sadly, i had no pals that could or would want to do this kind of base training.
Seems like an over complication to me: endurance training essentially is fatigue management.
Like you wrote, long endurance rides are hard workouts (if you scale the length accordingly), and need appropriate recovery. But in my experience, it suffices to treat one type of hard workouts, intervals with intensity, the same as hard endurance rides in that e. g. you want to alternate between hard days and either easy days or rest.
It doesnāt sound surprising to me: you have broadened your base, poured the foundation or whatever metaphor you prefer. In the next training phase you need to change the stimulus to raise the roof.
What were you doing before? It sounds like maybe you maybe were a bit fatigued and dropping the intensity to only 1 ride per week allowed you to basically do a taper to a peak but in the long run it wasnāt enough stimulus and you plateaued. Youād probably have seen more gains if youād swapped like 2 of those hours for a threshold workout but who knows.
I think that being more rested may have been part of it but I also noticed that when during group rides my HR was around 10bpm lower across the board such that my Saturday group ride felt way easier.
Before this phase I was riding what Iād call ānormalā - regular endurance pace which was more like 130-135bpm. 120-125bpm was ridiculously slow for me.
The first thing that stood out from this training was that 120-125bpm was like 12mph. I was crawling. It didnāt feel productive even as an endurance pace. It felt like recovery pace. After 8 weeks, that 12mph turned into 17-19mph.
I modeled this training after exactly what Seiler was saying in podcasts at the time - 65% of HRmax to approximate VT1. This was like 7 years ago when he was big on telling amateurs not to ride endurance in the grey zone. I donāt think that was was so supposed to mean that one should never do tempo or sweet spot intervals but just to keep endurance pace (the bulk of oneās training) below VT1.
Yeah I mean some extra freshness can lower HR during hard efforts.
This I canāt explain. Thatās like a doubling in power output in 2 months. Iām sure thereās some other confounding variable or you were just super fatigued going in and you really needed some rest for your sympathetic nervous system to calm down.
It certainly was the first time I did all my endurance riding below VT1. In the first paragraph of the paper it says:
Unfortunately, incomplete recovery from frequent training can make the stress-related side-effects cumulative as well.
That could explain the more recovered theory. Previously, I wasnāt chronically tired in the traditional sense - tired legs and all that.
Seiler has later said that maybe running ends up more polarized and cycling ends up more pyramidal.
I think one could follow keeping the āeasy days easyā and still do sweetspot and threshold efforts because even with some time at threshold, the vast majority of riding is still endurance no matter how you slice. (Unless of course you are 3 hours a week and do threshold intervals every ride.)
I had a similar effect like @AJS914 : Riding slow long endurance - a bit slower than you think - does move things.
I observed that I recover better from hard efforts while doing these rides. Not doing them or doing them too hard led to worse recovery.
You go slow for quite a while and then somehow it still feels slow but there is more energy. The hard part for me was to still go slow when I felt good.
It does feel ridiculously slow. I was doing 3 hour rides with books on tape.
I think this is hard for lower volume amateurs. A pro with a 400+ watt FTP is motoring along at a good clip at 200-250 watts and burning significant kjs. An amateur with a 250 watt ftp will feel like they are falling over sideways at 125 watts.
Back when I raced cat 3/4 a million years ago, we had a cat 1 on our team. He used to noodle around for like 20-25 hours a week. We used to kind of joke about him because he was always going so slow. Our cat 4 brains didnāt understand the genius.
Absolutely! I find myself around 50-55% of FTP, but I go by feel (means even less when it feels hardish/like I need to push a bit). The gauge is that I feel better after the ride. It still is not like doing nothing.
Edit: These rides usually make me hungry, but not tired. Hard to explain. I find it super hard doing them outside with all the inconsistent terrain and hills. Itās just not fun. On the trainer it can be relaxing.
Only a speculation but I bet burning a lot of fat during a ride stimulates hunger more than burning muscle glycogen. The body has no survival need to immediately restore muscle glycogen.
And for some people high intensity, adrenaline, cortisol, etc can blunt their appetite. While those easy rides wonāt have the same effect even though youāre still burning a lot.
I seem to have had the same results. Since getting back from holiday in mid September Iāve done a weekly 4-5 easyish Group ride. (easy with 3 or 4 Tempo/Sweetspot efforts along the way) and 1 or 2 short VO2max sessions when Iāve felt really rested. The rest has been very easy 50-55% FTP noodling on the turbo or super easy outside on my own. Nett result is I seem to be flying with (for what its worth) my best Garmin VO2max estimate in 3 years which at 70 Iām surprisingly happy about. There seems to be something in this easy riding. Iāve also been walking for about 60-90 mins a day which may have helped. Iāve also made sure I have a couple of rest/recovery days each week and my sleep has been better as well.
I just want to add that I worked on anaerobic capacity a little bit this late summer and then magically all my vo2 work got way easier - like 125% wasnāt a problem anymore.
And, I really just did a tiny amount of sprint work. I was listening to some running coach podcast about Igloi (legendary running coach) and how he would prescribe āfresh runsā on every workout. I started incorporating them into my workouts.
A fresh run is just a 15 second stride and itās not 100% all out. Just ramp up to 8 or 9 out of 10 effort over 10 seconds, hold for 5, and then back off. Iād do like 5 after a warm-up and before any intervals and then do 5 before a 10 minute cool down. Itās meant to be a little extra something something, not a full on, break the pedals, sprint.
I imagine that one could boost anaerobic capacity in any number of the traditional ways for a similar effect.
