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IMO, short (read <1hr) Z2 rides are really noise just to pad TSS and have very little physiological adaptation benefit.
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A good use case for them is to do them fasted in the mornings in hopes to be “fat adapted”. Even that claim is dubious to me as the rides are not long enough. I use these fasted rides as a weight loss tool
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To me, they are helpful in keeping my legs churning and move out the lactic acid so that I may do SS/Threshold/Vo2max workouts the next day.
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I think their entering argument is kind of “all things being equal”… e.g. you’ve fueled that workout the same way you’d fuel other workouts and are entering with an optimized glycogen load in your muscles and liver. A 2-hour ride would burn off glycogen stores alongside burning fat, and as glycogen depletes, your body uses more and more fat as fuel. If you enter a 1-hour zone 2 ride in an already glycogen depleted state, you almost certainly see some fat burning adaptation.
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The low intensity workouts are a great time to work on pedalling technique & improving your posture/position on the bike etc. as well.
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I nearly ditched them when I first saw one. Then I did Pettit… Now I like them for two reasons
1). Pedalling technique and focus on what my legs are doing
2). Time trial position adaptation. Doing up to 2 hrs at the moment as I am heading for 100m TTs this year and in this English weather it’s the best way to get TT position dialled in.
Definitely not junk miles.
Sometimes, when I have a hard outside group ride the next or previous day, it’s a relief to do a Z2 easy steady session… as long as Chad talks to me…
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I think the more you train the more you can train so Pettit is a good way of keeping that going.
I did Taylor -2 yesterday, legs felt ok today so did Pettit as planned and will back that up with Clarke tomorrow before resting Friday. I’m pretty sure my legs will feel better for tomorrow’s session having trained easy today.
I often find that if I do an easy ride on a rest day I feel better when it comes to the next “REAL” riding day. I can often feel sluggish after a “proper” rest day.
I sometimes might go two weeks without having a proper rest day, that is no bike, I feel fine doing that.
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I think the workout summary text for Pettit does a pretty good job at summarizing the goal/value:
" Aerobic Endurance workouts are aimed at improving your aerobic-power-producing capabilities in a low stress manner.
By riding for increasingly longer periods of time, your endurance muscle fibers become more efficient at utilizing fat for fuel and sparing sugar stores for more intense efforts.
Additionally, Endurance workouts like this can improve oxygen delivery & utilization, increase muscular resistance to fatigue, improve integrity of connective tissue, and even help you improve your on-bike nutrition strategies.
Regarding the form drills, Pettit targets improvements in pedaling mechanics, leg speed, and sprinting form."
Like others have stated, this type of workout was historically the one I would skip. This year, I have made an effort to include these “filler” workouts and I have been really happy with it. I look forward to them because they’re easy, but can definitely feel the added TSS. Sometimes it even makes the following hard workout feel easier. (As stated in the workout summary for Bays)
Text from Bays:
One of two central goals is to improve aerobic fitness and prime the muscles for the more rigorous workouts ahead. The second is to increase muscle fiber recruitment in an effort to grow your muscular strength.
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Good point. I would like to see some science that indicates what’s happening to the system within a 1-hour window. FWIW, I never said anything about Pettit being a junk workout, I just threw out some options if you wanted to use that ‘easy’ day for some off-the-bike work—which I also think can have tremendous value; especially if you’re cooked from the previous day’s workout.
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To get the most value from short endurance rides (improving fat metabolism), I think its best to do them in a glycogen depleted state.
Generally, endurance rides of greater than 2 hours are preferred for training fat metabolism - link to a study on this in the following forum post:
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Personally, I don’t bother with the 1hr Z2 rides any more. I’d rather pack my week with an hour of a different sort of work and then take the Z2 scheduled day completely off. The harder work drives more adaptations than Z2 and the day off is better recovery (for me) than a short “this might do something for you” ride.
That said, if I’m still interested in training come next fall, I’ll be doing a lot more Z2 work, just no 1hr sessions.
I’ll confess to not having read the whole thread, but simply in answer to the OP’s question about 1hr Z2 rides, I my view they are pointless. They are neither long enough to stress your body through duration, intense enough to stress your body through intesity, too long to be considered active recovery, or too intense to be considered active recovery.
Adding TSS for TSS’ sake is in my view junk miles.
If you have 1hr spare, if you need more active recovery ride at Z1 or if you need more intensity consider a different workout.
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“So, right away, you see your first “no-go” zone! Anything less than 10 minutes in your lactate threshold/FTP level (91-105% of FTP) is a “no-go”.”
Does that mean for the whole workout or interval length?
I think it’s wise to not always think of these workouts of trying to improve or recover etc, there is a lot to be said for using them to help build that template and schedule of training.
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Interval length.
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According to that analysis Is 20 minutes at SS (88%) not deemed worthy then? (I cannot quite correlate this on the table).
Look for the workout called Hunter and let me know your thoughts.
According to that article anything shorter than 30 minutes is no go for SS if performed below 91%.
Thank you for the link on here, some great articles on the site.
This is a good article looking at the purpose of recovery runs. I’m sure the same logic can be applied to cycling.
Additional research has shown that when athletes begin a workout with energy-depleted muscle fibers and lingering muscle damage from previous training, the brain alters the muscle recruitment patterns used to produce movement. Essentially, the brain tries to avoid using the worn-out muscle fibers and instead involves fresher muscle fibers that are less worn out precisely because they are less preferred under normal conditions.
When your brain is forced out of its normal muscle recruitment patterns in this manner, it finds neuromuscular “shortcuts” that enable you to run more efficiently (using less energy at any given speed) in the future. Pre-fatigued running is sort of like a flash flood that forces you to alter your normal morning commute route. The detour seems a setback at first, but in searching for an alternative way to reach the office, you might find a faster way–or at least a way that’s faster under conditions that negatively affect your normal route.
Kenyan runners do plenty of slow recovery runs and they tend to do OK 
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As i posted before, we shouldn’t get so hung up on the immediate benefit of a single workout but consider how it fits in to the whole spectrum of our total activity.
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