I bought a road bike late 2015 and started training with a club for century rides. Did the first one 2 months after buying the bike, no surprise I bonked the last 15 miles from underfueling. From the beginning I was advised to not chase rabbits and sticking with the group of similar riders (after getting a PM that turned out to be ~2.5-3.2 W/kg riders).
My zone2 HR has stayed the same over the years, here are two different zone models:
- 110-134bpm Coggan recommendations
- 128-142bpm Friel recommendations
Pretty big difference. I use Friel zones for HR, so 142bpm is top of zone2.
Without a power meter this is what I did back then:
- the first 3 century rides just rode by feel/RPE and learned about hydration and nutrition
- then used that data to define a loose all day HR pacing strategy
- decided that goal was to keep average HR to ~140bpm or less
Here is the data from my century rides (oldest at top):
The one with 124bpm average had bad HR data for first 2 hours, removing bad data the average is 134bpm. Three of those started in the mountains and climbed above 8000’ elevation. The others started near sea level. Wide range of temps.
Had a power meter for 2nd half of that list, started playing the game of pushing for higher average power at end of ride (but still keeping HR average around z2 / ~142bpm). I’m bigger rider and a lot of short punches above threshold can really drive up IF. The IF estimates without HR aren’t too helpful, but calculated by TP and WKO.
I’d look at your average HR from longer rides, and see if you can spot a trend. Look at both Coggan and Friel zone2 HR and pick an upper bound. While riding you will hit steep pitches so don’t worry too much about going over zone2. Just generally try and keep HR average somewhere in zone2.
Hope that helps.