Therein lies the difference between a researcher looking at training logs/data, and a coach.
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I donāt recall as Iāve heard him many times on several different podcasts. From your description, I think you are riding a little bit harder than the ISM talk test.
I did the pledge of allegiance test. Can you say it without pausing for air?
No. When I read some of your posts, I think you are riding too easy 
At least if you were me. I tried the bottom of Frielās HR-zone2 / upper middle HR-zone2 of Cogganās āI donāt want to give these but here they are anyway.ā Those were too low. For me. On 8-12 hours/week. After 9 months I hired a coach and he pushed up the targets on my zone2 rides, up to what Iām calling all-day HR based on two/three dozen 5-14 hour rides. And then performance increased, like when I self-coached in 2016-2017 and only had the Time Crunched Cyclist and Friel Bible books (and didnāt listen to podcasts, or professors that are not coaches).
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Iāve related this story a number of times.
A few years ago my 125bpm was really, really slow. 120bpm was getting on the bike and pedaling a few times. 5bpm didnāt make much difference.
I persevered with this Seiler base block at 125bpm. I started off at 6 hours per week and was going 12mph at the start. I ended the block 11 weeks later at 13 hours per week and my 125bpm was now 17-18mph. It was a huge change for me.
Interestingly, I was breaking all my strava PRs at week 7/8 and didnāt really improve more despite increasing hours more and more.
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See the story above. I made enormous gains in 7 weeks of riding slow. My mistake that year was not shifting gears into a tempo/ss/ftp block. Or, maybe doing a VO2 block.
This year, Iām doing 2+ hours per week of the Steve Neal style tempo intervals and Iāve hit all time wattages now in March and I feel like Iām just getting started.
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Opposite here, 9 months of endurance rides at the bottom of Friel HR-zone2 or low-mid Coggan HR-zone2 was at best causing me to tread water. Only did āzone2 onlyā for 8 weeks, and after that added sweet spot and later some higher intensity work and fast group rides. Should have known better, when I was self-coached the Friel HR zones worked well. But always willing to try something and see if it works.
Since switching to what for you might in fact be too high, my RHR has dropped 10+bpm and HRV has improved significantly. In 2019 it was around 72bpm, its always been high, and now its routinely 58-60bpm. Pretty much all year long Iām doing intervals and intensity, there is no dedicated endurance block except if Iām lifting heavy, or the first 3-4 weeks coming back from being off the bike for a month. And always power targets, except for unusual situations like coming back after extended time off (and then HR for only a 3-4 week block). For targets its mostly driven off recovery, with some cross referencing to HR & previous power-to-HR data. On the bike its power ranges without worrying about HR going over some boundary.
My easy aerobic rides are like 110 bpm, but im shooting to stay below lt1 and use a hr cap of 120. Was doing more work at lt1 until about 2020, and then started trying to split up my endurance training to @lt1, < lt1, and well below lt1.
Hereās my overall distribution for 22.
Thanks and IIRC you have done blood draws to determine LT1, correct?
FWIW here is my season to date:
Averaging around 8.5 hours per week if I exclude Septemberās C19 lost month.
On dfa a1 ā¦ if the developer of hrvlogger even says that it is crap
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Did you have a chance to try again yet?
Curious about your reasoning/motivation to split endurance into @lt1, less than lt1, and way below lt1? Do you run? Looks like you are averaging a little under 6 hours/week - about 60 hours in your HR zones, about 36 hours with (cycling) power, and about 10 weeks since Jan 1. Are you running 24 hours since Jan? Running is a lot harder on the body, and I believe has more compelling reasoning for doing more of it way below lt1.
Not yet.Until Iām reasonably proficient in drawing blood iām just doing one offs when I get on the turbo. ie Gentle warm up then after 30 mins +20 Watts for 10m etc. My last one was 140W*129bpm @ 1.5mmol. Iāll take that as my limit until the next time I do one. Iām recovering from a couple of colds (2 years of not seeing anyone then visiting 2 sets of grandkids). Iām assuming that I wasnāt properly recovered when I did the other one. I also did it too soon after a carb heavy breakfast. When I can do the test quickly and efficiently Iāll do a proper test.
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he is not saying it is exactly crap, but that it may have application if used in a more certain way, just like 4 mmol lactate is not the golden point to LT1ā¦ it is always more complicated when you talk about human physiology it seems. I know it does not likely work for me but still has some information it may just be that 0.75 is not the break point. The 0.5 point is interesting in that it is a point where the data become completely random, that is an interesting thing that may be informative as well? Time and more research will tell.
this is pretty close to saying ācrapā for me
Just to add that the referenced study had 1min ramp test which makes it obsolete in my eyes. That is not to say that 0.75 is correct, but that the protocol of the study does not provide any valuable information. That being said, it would definitely not be surprising to see individual variation for DFA alfa1 values at LT1 for different individuals.
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I alternate run/bike on a 14 day mesocycle so thereās approximately the same number of runs as bikes.
I actually started forcing myself to run slower the last few years after having success biking easier for specific workouts. Staying far below lt1 when running for still involves some walking at times, but i decided to give that a try after seeing elites with sub 30 min 10k running 8 min milesā¦ i can do some easy work at 930 or so. With running, it is incredibly easy to go harder than lt1, so to do that with my running has taken a lot of discipline.
Why i split it up has been my discovery with my own response to training when seeking that minimum effective dose. Also, staying under lt1 is generally going to keep me fresh for my key days, but playing around with the intensity on my easy days gets me fresher for my harder days.
So now Iāve settled on: mon and tues, stay well below lt1, wed and thurs intervals, friday below lt1, saturday intervals on a longer day, sunday stay below lt1 but longer so the week looks like: recovery, recovery, hard, hard, easy, hard + longer, easy + longer.
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As always, using a mean value without discussing the standard deviation is where using an absolute value for the thresholds can get you in to trouble.
If we assume a normal distribution around the mean, it means it takes +/- 3 standard deviations to represent 99.7% of the population. So reporting the standard dev is absolutely necessary.
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I cite Seiler ā¦ ufff ā¦
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buggerā¦back to square 1 thenā¦ 
The more I read here the more I just think its ride steady or ride pretty hard or ride very hard (occasionally), and have some restā¦ 
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I wonder if there is some disagreement with Altini and Bruce Rogers. I just listened to the latest That Triathlon Show podcast and Rogers says that the HRV4Training datalogger didnāt work for him personally.
If you read Rogerās paper there certainly are a lot of caveats, āfurther study neededā, etc. In the podcast, he says āballparkā many times - that dfa a1 might get you close if you use the right equipment, protocol, and software analysis.
Iām not sure why Seiler has a dog in this fight.
And Coggan would say that LT1/VT1/etc. isnāt a physiological threshold at all.
So we are left with DFA a1 measuring sympathetic/parasympathetic, lactate tests measuring a rise in lactate, and gas exchange measuring VT1. They all measure different things and often correlate with a similar level of exercise intensity.
Or, one could do the talk test (free and easy)!
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